The Keen Eye the Blind Eye and the Third Eye.

I haven’t posted in a long time. A great deal has changed since last I posted, but to put it into proper perspective I have to go back to the time before I started this livejournal.

Four years ago my life was my own. I lived in a small apartment and saw my family rarely if at all. Mind you I was getting along with most of them better, but didn’t require much contact. I had a traumatic childhood and was working on dealing with different issues that had arisen from it. I was making progress, but it was hampered by my family’s “Let’s pretend there isn’t a problem rather than dealing with it” attitude. I was pretty happy despite the fact that I was unemployed and my closest friend had moved back to Colorado. I had a few very good friends that kept me from getting depressed when times were bad and shared the good times. I was very much enjoying writing a chain story here with one of them. I also had a good prospect on a job.

My mother died in a car accident on July 18^th 2006. I guess technically both of my parents perished in that accident, but we didn’t know that at the time. My father was quite disturbed at my mother’s passing and so I handled all of the arrangements. I also moved in with him and took care of his finances and tried to get him to live again. It wasn’t something I was looking forward to, but something that needed to be done. He stayed with me six months out of the year and went to Arizona to stay with my sister the rest. I lived in a house which I now own, but it has never and will never be my home.

Despite doing everything I could to try to get my father to return to the world of the living I failed. He refused to do anything that he might enjoy. He became a bitter needy old man who sucked the joy out of anyone he was near. The months when he was in Arizona were difficult and the ones when he was up here were miserable. It became more and more obvious that my father was just waiting to die. You may not know me well, but I’ll tell you that I was in that position once and I abhor seeing anyone make that choice. Yet I watched my father do it for three years. If he could have found a way to commit suicide without everyone knowing he would have, in fact he tried a couple of times.

After a little luck allowed me to keep his second attempt from succeeding he decided he would like to live with my sister full time. Mind you he also decided that he was going to die in Arizona to spare me any of the difficulty I handled for him when mother died. My sister a control freak, drama queen, and desperate for any kind of parental validation jumped at he chance to have him with her full time. I warned her about my concerns about my father’s mental and emotional health, but she didn’t listen. When they left I knew I wouldn’t be seeing him again. He died last week.

Now I have to decide how I wish to take my life back. I am sorry that my father is dead, but to be fair the man I have lived with for the last three years bears little resemblance to my father. He was bitter, mad at life, and he wanted to die. So much of that mirrors my past self that it is quite disturbing. I am hoping to rekindle my love of writing and to show some of that here, but it may not be that easy. I need to find the spark of my gift and I wonder if in ignoring it for the last few years perhaps the last of the coals have gone cool. I guess we will find out, or not together.

S-

I have a couple of posts in mind for this week. By Sunday you should see something new here, maybe even something worth viewing.

S-

I was accused of being a real sob the other day, and I thought it might be a good idea to test my perceptions.

I am absolutely not a morning person. I wake up grouchy and it takes me a while to get my attitude in order. My normal routine is to get up, shower, dress, make and eat breakfast, check e-mail, listen to the TV and prepare for the day. After about an hour` I am ready to go to work and meet whatever demands the day may make of me. My job has people making demands of me all day.

So when I started taking care of my father I told him that I preferred to be left alone first thing in the morning. In fact I told him that it really screwed up my day to have someone in my face first thing in the morning and I found it very annoying. Now the reason we had this conversation was that he had been getting up early (05:00) for three weeks so that he could rapid fire dozens of pointless questions at me while I was trying to get ready for the day. As I watched my efficiency deterriorate day by day as a result of the disruption I decided I should just let him know the unpleasant effect his behavior was having on me. I figured he would just save the questions until I got home. He was already in my face every moment after work so I figured he could part with an hour.

His response was, "Well you'll just have to get used to it."

It seemed as if everything I told him had gone in one ear and out the other. I finally told him if he didn't allow me at least a little time in the morning to myself I would have to leave. He seemed to get the message, for a day or two.

I started a new job about a month ago. As soon as I started he once again started getting up early (he'd actually go back to bed after I left) and getting in my face again. I was going to remind him again when he entered the living room one morning and prefaced the visit with, "I know you don't like this, but I don't care."

I finally asked him, "So are you just trying to get me fired or what?" Once again I told him that I needed an hour to get my act together in the morning and learning this new job was quite a challenge, one that I couldn't meet if I was having every day disrupted by his morning habits. He sulked, but let me alone for three whole mornings.

Then earlier this week I had the same problem again. I was making breakfast and again he started with pointless questions. I grudgingly answered until my breakfast was ready. Then I took it outside to the front stoop and ate it in silence. I didn't see any point in once again rehashing something that he clearly didn't care about. So I just went where I could prepare for my day in silence. 

So is it unreasonable to expect an hour of polite silence and privacy each day, just Monday through Friday? Was I in some way failing to communicate the issue, and why it is important to me?

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.

S- 

Well I finally found a job. It took a long time despite my exceptional skills and work ethic. I seem to be doing well, perhaps even better than my employers expect. I'm sure over the next few months they will be shocked as I re-define their expectations. As usual I don't so much fit in as become a part of the infrastructure of the business. Still it seems a pleasant place to work. Granted I haven't made any new friends yet, but I'm hoping that will change.

Then, of course, there is my father. His hip replacement is healing well. The down side to it is that he requires a lot of care right now. I don't mind, although I am a bit tired from the demands of my new job. Seeing him go stir crazy as he waits to heal enough to walk and drive on his own is painful. Especially in the light of having been in a similar place while I waited to find another job. 

So between those two factors I have the feeling that I am still kind of on hold. I mean once I am established in the job and have a reliable source of income some options will open to me. When Dad is finished with his PT he will head South to my sister in Arizona. Of course that begs the question, "Then what?"  I do not have an answer for that. 

S-  

I have been without a job for over a year. I have been looking, interviewing and doing everything else I could think of to get new employment. Last week I finally had success. Today I start my new job, and the simple thought of it is like a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I guess that part of my problem is that I enjoy working. I get a thrill out of solving problems, learning new things and doing things many people think impossible.

No I'm not a rocket scientist. I was just hired as an inventory specialist. It is what many would consider a tedious job, but I find such work very entertaining. After mastering the basics there is always the unexpected problem that pops up, as well as the opportunity to improve the process and therefore my efficiency.

I haven't been in this good a mood in some time, and today is going to be a great day.

S-

 

In the old west three vampires travel together. Eli is the master. Katya and I are lovers who he found lifetimes ago. By sharing his wisdom he taught us to survive. We have never questioned his decisions not even when he decided we would move from the old country to the wild west. It was here in the wild west of the United States that this changed. We had been earning our living by hunting men. We were doubly gifted at such pursuits and profited by bringing the evil to justice.

 

Eli expected our love to fade and was confounded by its' perseverance through more than a century. He wanted us to put such childish mortal pursuits behind us and for us to fully embrace our natures. He never made it a command so we had no idea if we would obey, nor did he. Our reputations had begun to grow as the gunmen we hunted found us impossible to ambush. Word got around that we had indian charms that protected us from harm making us hard to kill. One of our bounties took that legend to heart. He found an old medicine man and asked for a weapon to kill these hunters that traveled the deserts at night.

 

The medicine man recognized us for what we were and offered the man a tomahawk made from a stone that fell from the sky. The head was made of a flint like stone that was riddled with veins of silver. He swore that its magic could fell even the night hunters that chased the bad man. He didn't fully believe the medicine man but offered to pay for the weapon. The wise man handed him the weapon saying that it was his destiny to carry it and walked away.

 

It was a month later when we caught up with the outlaw. He knew we were close and his fear drew us to him. We knew he was waiting for us to make a move, but it was night. We had all of the advantages. We could see, we were faster and stronger than him, and although his bullets could hurt us it was unlikely he could kill one us with a six gun or rifle.

 

He had fled to a small cave outside of town and waited for us. Eli decided that smoking him out would be the safest. We piled some brush in front of the cave and lit it on fire. Before long we could hear him coughing in the cave and we asked him to surrender. He knew he would get his neck stretched if he did, so surrender without a fight wasn't an option. He rigged the back of the cave to collapse if he tugged on a rope connected to a keystone. Then he wrapped his bandanna around his nose and mouth and dampened it with water from his canteen. He quietly moved as close as he could to the mouth of the cave and then pulled the rope.

 

The collapse was as loud as thunder and filled the air around us with the dust and stone that belched from the cave. We were blind and deaf and he chose that moment to strike. Katya happened to be closest to him and he swung the weapon at her. Somehow sensing her danger she dodged to the side and the blade only bit into her shoulder. We didn't hear her grunt of pain, but the scream of agony that followed penetrated even our nearly deaf ears. I moved toward Katya while Eli moved to stop out target's escape.

 

I found her lying in a fetal position on the ground clutching her arm. I could see a deep wound, but it didn't look that bad. I cut the arm of her jacket and shirt off to get a better look and was shocked to see tiny veins of silver radiating out from the wound area. I tried to probe the flowing silver lines, but they burned like fire, blistering my fingers in an instant. It was clear that the silver flowing under her skin was hurting her, but it wasn't doing the damage silver normally did to our kind. I cleaned the wound as best I could and bound it up knowing that her bleeding should stop quickly and if everything proceeded as normal her wound would heal in a day or two.

 

It was then that Eli returned. He said that the fellow had escaped and looked concerned over Katya's wound. He explained that each of us had different gifts and one of Katya's was that although silver caused her pain it wasn't as destructive to her as it was to us. Over the next week we searched for our mark, but he seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth. What's worse was that the silver of his weapon slowly flowed across Katya's body making it impossible for us to touch skin to skin. Eli got his wish, we were going to have to put such mortal foolishness behind us like it or not.

 

It seemed odd, but I really didn't think anything of it until nearly six months later. I was checking wanted fliers at the local sheriff's office and asked about the badman who had taken so much from us. He said that the fellow was found in a shallow grave not far from the cave where we faced him, his neck broken as cleanly as if he'd faced that noose after all. That was when I realized that he hadn't survived our encounter. Eli must have caught him, but rather than bring him in alive for the bigger bounty, or even dead for the lesser one he had killed the man and hidden the body. It was clear that the man knew something that Eli didn't want us to know, and he was willing to kill to keep us ignorant.

 

When I told Katya her reaction was the same as mine. She lost her faith in our leader. At the next opportunity we fled putting as much distance between Eli and ourselves as we could. Somehow Eli had orchestrated that attack, and the consequences. We couldn't trust him anymore so we stopped hunting men and started traveling from one Indian tribe to the next hoping to find one  where they might recognize Katya's condition and have a cure.

 

I had hoped we had seen the last of Eli, but men like him are used to being in control. If you resist their efforts they usually respond poorly. We'd fled Eli's control and he wasn't going to let that pass uncontested.

S-

My mother had serious emotional issues. She was the child of two abusive alcoholics and she couldn't reconcile her anger with her parents, so she sublimated it. She convinced herself that she was an unhappy child because they were poor. She spent her entire life looking for the one thing she could buy that would make her happy. She died never knowing a moment of true happiness. What was worse was that all of the rage she sublimated ended up being directed at her immediate family. All of my childhood I remember her periodically lapsing into near homicidal rages over nothing. As my father worked on the road much of the time my sister and I suffered the brunt of her emotional abuse while our father just sort of pretended that ours was a normal life.

Mother bought into the whole denial thing big time. She took great pains to try to present the face of a perfect family to everyone except the people that were supposed to matter the most to her. My sister and I reacted to our abuse in different ways. I never trusted anyone, Iearned to read people and usually understand their motives better than they did. Eventually I turned that perception on myself and became , well let's say an advocate of truth and honesty. My sister's response was to master denial. She became so good at it that she lost track of reality for a while. By the time she found it again her mother was the perfect mother.

Anyway my father didn't much care for the factual comment I made today. Specifically he started with I don't remember it that way and ended with I should be more like my sister. I asked how so. His response was that she forgot all of our mother's insanity and she was completely happy as a result. After I stopped laughing I pointed out that all her denial provided her was the certainty that she would never accept the existence of or be able to work on the issues that were born of our upbringing.

I was able to verify that statement this week. I discovered that although she is incredibly capable in her work life that she suffers from an extreme case of learned helplessness in her private life. The first of the evidence I will provide for this is an event which occurred a few years ago. My parents were quite busy, they had just discovered that my father had a heart condition, and were in the process of getting it monitored and controlled. My sister, who had just received her birthday gift from them in May decided that she needed to be a big shot and offered to select a gift from them for me. Mind you I am hard to buy for, and so at my parent's request had created a list on Amazon for their convenience. As a result the incredible effort that my sister was relieving them of was less than five minutes on the internet.

Well rather than even spend the five minutes on-line that my parents would have she presented me with a package of DVDs that she received for free because of some function she had performed at work. Now a similar package of DVDs were her gift to me, and I had come to expect that kind of lack of effort from her. Still the fact that she had eliminated even the five minutes of thought and effort that my parents might have put into a gift for me and replaced it with a gift requiring no thought or effort, and that they let her, really hurt my feelings.

In response I made the decision that it would be better if she and I stopped exchanging gifts, and that she no longer have anything to do with the gift giving process as regards me. I even added the proviso that should my parents fail to have the time to get me a gift I would rather get nothing than have her involved.

The following year my mother died and my father asked my sister to order some of the gifts on my Amazon wish list for Christmas. You would think that something like would be hard to screw up, but she managed. She waited until the last minute and then selected the ship all at once option. I think I received some of my gifts in April, but only because I explained why they hadn't shipped yet. That's when I told my father that he didn't need to bother with birthday or christmas gifts for me anymore.

Just last month my father needed to fly up here from Arizona. My sister asked when I wanted him to arrive and I told her to make it near the middle of the day so we could avoid rush hour traffic coming and going. Her first effort had him arriving early in the morning. I commented on this and she requested a specific time. I told her between 10:00 and 11:00. She picked a flight arriving after 14:00. and bought his ticket. I wondered if there perhaps weren't any flights arriving when I wanted so I went on-line and checked. It took less than a minute to verify that they had flights arriving at 10:30 exactly in the middle of the window I had requested.

I asked my sister about this and her response was that she just didn't know the computer well enough to find that flight. Mind you a five year old could have found what I did in under a minute, and she ran the CS department for a major shipper. She created and refined the processes that they used, documented them, trained her staff and other managers, had the most efficient department in the company, and saved the company millions. This doesn't sound like an incompetent person to me. It doesn't sound like someone that fails to learn from their mistakes.

Her comment was that computer skills don't come easy for her. My response was to point out that she had mastered dozens of computer programs for her job, and the fact that it didn't come easy just proved that she was willing to take the time and effort to do a good job. And that was really the rub. At work she expected to succeed so she took whatever time and effort it took to get the job done right. At home she believed the line of crap that our mother had fed her for her entire life and she expected that no matter what she did she would fail. So she spent a minimum of effort, did a sloppy job and failed. Why? Because she had it drummed into her head that failure was all she could expect, all she was capable of.

Yeah my sister is totally unaffected by our childhood horror story and lives a blissfully happy life having put all of that behind her.

S-

Edwarddian has banned me from his LJ apparently in an effort to silence my response to his final post on a thread. I will include a copy of his final post and my disallowed response here in the interest of completeness.
Post of Edwarddian:

My Response: The character of Loiosh serves two purposes in the novels in which he appears. The first and foremost is as a foil for the internal monologue of the main character. Though not a PC role this is the role for which your friend is perfectly suited and the one she wishes. The other role is as a PC in which the character has been forced to make decisions without input from Vlad, said decisions on occasion saving Vlad's life (which suggests consequences). This is a role for which your friend is not suited according to your own statements.

Your actor analogy fails to hold up for many reasons, primarily because actors regardless of their part are given lines and direction. Players in a RPG are more like comics doing improv. In such an example your friend freezes when the improv spotlight is on her, but has great feedback and suggestions over coffee after the show.

If my analysis is incorrect (and though I believe it to be accurate I may be wrong) the obvious response is that I haven't a clue whereof I speak, discount my words as the ramblings of a fool. Rather than do that you've become quite angry, so much so that you feel threatened enough by my observations as to ban me from your LJ. That seems a rather excessive response to a bumbling fool, but makes much more sense if my assessments are accurate and you exist in a state of denial. As I said I never met your friend and based my comments only on the descriptions you gave. If those descriptions were inaccurate why did you post them?

S-

The answer is yes. I like to be spontaneous, but the more important an event is to me the more likely i am to plan it out.
S-

                I have one more thing to say about friendship. Friendship is a relationship and some require regular work to keep them healthy while others come easily and at times seem effortless. Regardless of the type friendship is a gift and it is important to consider how your actions may impact it. Think about those little demands that you make upon your friends and those concessions they give you. You may not be able to eliminate those demands, but at the very least you can thank you friends for meeting them. It is amazing how much difference it makes to hear a heartfelt thank you. It can change something that has become a chore or imposition back into an act of friendly concession freely and happily given.

                Do your friends deserve anything less than your thanks for being there for you, for putting up with you, for making your life better? Remember that goes both ways.

 

Ok, I’m done with the soapbox for now. I hope my insights prove helpful to someone.

 

S-

        Most of the people who read this journal know me and so this revelation will come as no surprise to them. Some of you have never met me face to face and it is to you this is addressed. When I read or write messages especially when discussing differing points of view I tend to detach emotionally from the process.

        I am quite introspective in general so I regularly question my own motives and have no objection when someone else questions them. I also find that people will use emotional barbs as a tactic to try to deflect discussions when logic and reason have failed them. As a result I look at what they suggest and examine it for accuracy. If it fails that test I note the reasons why, and discard the suggestion without prejudice. If there are any points of accuracy to the suggestion I cede those to the author and integrate them into my self-image. If that impacts my position (which it rarely does) I adjust my position. I then thank the author for their keen insights.

        I am used to other people getting angry when their emotional arguments fail to move me. It isn’t personal. I simply believe that saying it louder doesn’t make something any more or less true. Emotional subtext be it based on anger, fear, love or anything else only amount to saying something louder, at least to me.

        Some people have voiced their frustration that emotion doesn’t move me in such a situation, and have suggested that nothing will shift my position. To such critics my response is always the same. If you wish to shift my position state what you believe and the support you have for it. If I find that they have merit my position may shift. The argument, “I believe it because I desperately need to.” May hold merit for you, but holds none for me.

        Bear in mind that some matters may have no right or wrong answer. On issues of opinion your position may well be as strong as mine, but with no clear correct answer we may simply have to agree to disagree. I may not agree with your position, but that by no means suggests that it has no merit.

        End of PSA.

S-

        I understand that I have the capacity to detach emotionally when examining an issue. I often forget that some people lack this ability. This ability allows me to look at some past events and see the emotional subtext and its impact on the situation.

        For example a player of mine was habitually late for games. He had no problem with making the other players wait. This was incredibly disrespectful on that player’s behalf, but the fact that he was a friend generated a certain level of tolerance. Each time he made the other players wait it created a certain friction, but usually the good feelings generated by the game were enough to override an immediate reaction to that friction. The irritation it created remained, but they didn’t feel it needed a comment. In fact it wasn’t until he was forced to wait for a couple of players that had car trouble and made a complete ass out of himself that the players were willing to voice their irritation. However, at that point they weren’t just reacting to his immediate behavior, but to all of the times he had made them wait and the clear low value he placed on their time compared to his own.

        All of the players came to me as the GM and demanded something be done about his behavior. They weren’t suggesting that he be removed from the game, but they were no longer willing to put up with his attitude regarding the value of their time. I took measures to demand that he be on time or skip sessions after that. The first time he was asked to leave a session because he was late he stormed off in a huff and didn’t return for three years.

        That is one of the most interesting elements of a role-playing game. If the players consider themselves friends the friendship factor often blinds the players to the friction generated by their actions, or the implications that follow until the friction level reaches critical mass.

        What is even more interesting is that the players will often go into a state of denial when their, shall we say less than charitable, feelings are revealed. They may dislike having to put up with a player who habitually makes special demands on the game, but because they are friends they try to do the nice thing. The irritation may be natural, but to suggest that they feel it strikes a little too close to home. At that point they become defensive and deny that they are even having demands placed upon them.

        I guess it is human nature that when one is lying to himself he really hates having that lie revealed. When one has a certain self image supported by a self-delusion pointing out that you can see through that self-delusion is perceived as quite a threat.

        I find that quite fascinating because when I am faced with someone else’s observation of my behavior the first thing I do is examine their perception to see if there might be any accuracy to it. I regularly check my own motives for so it provides me with a handy double check. It doesn’t seem that this is a standard response.

        Initially I thought that this was a case of, “we can feel put upon by one of our members making unreasonable demands on us, but you can’t.” It was a reasonable hypothesis, but it proved to be incomplete. It wasn’t just the judgment about their friend’s demands that created the response, but the suggestion that they found those demands irritating, frustrating, whatever… that caused considerable overreaction.  

        The direction I am going with this is not only is it ok to feel that someone (even a friend) is making unreasonable demands upon you and be irritated by it, it is healthier to discuss that early on before it becomes an emotional hot button. Friendship is supposed to be a two way street. It is natural for friends to accommodate each other, but when the accommodation is primarily one direction it can create problems. These problems can be avoided by bringing them out in the open when they are small and easy to deal with. If people swallow their frustration again and again until something extra happens to tip the scales then the emotional response will be disproportional to the trigger incident.

S-

Well at least the writers for Heroes are. They have already established that infusing a corpse with the blood of a healer will bring them back to life, no harm no foul. Several of the people in the episode tonight knew this, but rather than do that they use Cartman to reprogram Sylar to become the new improved Nathan. I realize they don't want to lose Sylar and that they have made him far too powerful, and yet this was not the best solution. When you write yourself into a corner you can't conveniently forget established plot points to get out. You have to find a clever way to deal with it.

 

I hate sloppy plot work.

S-

The Art of War by Sun Tzu.

I've read it many times, several translations. It reminds me that little things are important, to play my own game, and to think outside the box. It also reminds me that no matter how overwhelming the opposition there is a way to turn my opponent's strength to my advantage. They are lessons that hopefully everyone learns at one time or another, but it never hurts to be reminded that regardless of the odds, success lies in your hands.

S-

I suppose the answer is Alex, but I don't know if he still counts. He went into passive-aggressive mode during one of his more self-destructive phases and broke contact because I disagreed with him on some minor issue. Well to be fair I think he felt threatened because I correctly read his conflicted status over the issue. He felt that he should boycott a mmorpg because of some issue that arose, but he didn't want to do that. So he blew the issue all out of proportion like a good little activist. He was so desperate for an out on the situation when the company threw his group a little bone (that was in no way a concession to any of their points or demands) he jumped on it as a win. It was clearly a case of hypersensitivity of a minority group coupled with desperation to prove they have some power in the real world.

I still think of him as a friend, but I disagreed with him and called him on not being the activist he thinks he should be. That makes me too aware of whom he really is and therefore a threat to his unstable world views.

I confess human nature still confounds me. People have little say in how they feel, and sometimes they simply want what they want. They don't have to act on those desires, but denying them won't make them go away either. I had a friend who thought she should be a militant feminist. The problem was that she loved her fiancé and wanted their relationship to work. She ended up giving away large pieces of herself to sustain the relationship long past the point it had ended. When she finally caught him in bed with another woman she felt a fool because it took that for her to realize their relationship was over. She couldn't forgive herself for wanting something so bad she fooled herself for a short time. Not being ready to let go just yet seems a pretty forgivable offense to me.

I have another friend who fell in love with and married a complete narcissist. She used his belief that he was responsible for her happiness to deconstruct the rest of his belief systems. In the end she had reconstructed him into something based on her image and once she had gotten everything she could from him kicked him to the curb. It would have been a hard lesson for anyone. It was harder for him because he couldn't forgive himself for allowing love to blind him to his disassembly. He had never encountered anything like that before and was unprepared for it. In the aftermath he is a stronger person, but he can't forgive himself for his complicity. He doesn't seem to get that people make mistakes.

So many people seem to expect reason to override feelings. Granted sometimes it works that way, but strong feelings can often impair our judgment. We try to limit these times, but when it happens and something bad results you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and learn from it. Making bad choices occasionally are one of the ways life teaches us to make better choices.

S-

It is always easier to talk to my closest friends about problems than it is to talk with family or strangers. My friends know me and understand what bothers me and why. My family hasn't bothered to get to know me, and strangers are, well strangers. With friends there are no trust issues, and you choose your friends. Their choice may be arbitrary, but they are your arbitrary choices not those of random chance. My closest friends live their lives in ways that inspire me and help me pick my own goals. My closest friends can completely disagree with me and still keep my respect, in fact sometimes their disagreement inspires more.

S-

Funny you should ask that. My parents explained that they were considering two names for me. The first was Adam, and the second was the one they gave me. Mind you they chose the second because they didn't want to duplicate any name in the family. After the fact they discovered that my father had a relative with the same first name who had a bastard child who's first name was the same as my middle name. What's worse is thet they chose non-standard spellings so that I have never had my first name spelled correctly the first time on any document. Oh and one final note I have never heard of any relative named Adam.

So the answer is Adam Victor would be my first and middle name if I'd had a vote.
S-

I'd find collect two pieces of data. The first would be the full truth behind 9-11 whatever that may be. The second would be collect all evidence of War Crimes committed by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, copies to be forwarded to international courts.

S-

We are talking about torture. Just call it torture. The answer to the question is that torture is very ineffective at getting good intelligence. It is great for getting people to say what you want, say for propaganda purposes, but as far as intelligence goes it is a waste of time. So it is never acceptable to use torture to get intelligence. What's worse is that the use of torture violates the Geneva Convention and American Law. So it is never acceptable for American forces to use torture. If you become a monster to defeat the monsters the monsters still win.

S-

How you treat you enemies tells the world a lot about who you are as a nation, perhaps even more than how you treat your people. The Bush Administration treated both deplorably. The ludicrous statement that we were liberating and bringing democracy and freedom to Iraq while committing War Crimes, atrocities; violating the civil rights of citizens and non-citizens alike, flaunting our willful violations of the Geneva Convention, and thumbing our nose at international law made George Bush the worst Foreign Policy President in the History of the US.

S-