Nerve pain, bone pain, muscle pain, joint pain...they all can be excruciating beyond one's wildest imagination.  My pain is mostly nerve pain. It lives in my left shoulder, and has an army of willing subjects who rove outward like rays from the sun, into my breast and neck and back and even down my arm and into my hand.

It has affected virtually every single aspect of my life, and is the dictator of how my mood will be and what my actions will be at any given time. It affects my work, my relationship with my kids and friends and lovers. It defines me in many ways. Pain is an integral part of my life. It is a constant in my world, and I am most pissed about that.

But I am not a possession of my pain, nor do I possess the pain that has found me. We co-exist, and sometimes, no often, I live along side of it, or in front of it, but I try never to get very far behind my pain. You can't let your pain get out of your sight...it is very sneaky and imperialistic. It wants to invade other areas and eventually take over your entire body. I'm sure of it.

But this is my empire, and I will never give in completely to this tyrant that blurs and obfuscates my joy, my peace and most of all the quiet stillness that can only happen completely in the absence of severe chronic pain.

Pain obviously has a place in this world, and serves a purpose for humanity (and animals). Do the trees and plants feel pain? One look at a commercial logging operation compels one to wonder. If a tree hurts in the forest and nobody is there to feel it...?

More than anything my pain brings me into a more spiritual mindset. I tend to want to forget all about that mindset after I have been feeling well for a while. I wonder sometimes if that is why I am in pain so often...to keep me humble. If that's the case I should be in extreme constant pain! Unfortunately, sometimes I am.

In the final analysis, the biggest danger for someone in chronic pain is that they will give up, give into the ocean of molten pain that has been tugging relentlessly upon their soul. I vow to fight back, and possibly even conquer my pain. It is a blessing in some way, and I require the mental 20/20 eyesight to see it. My pain has taught me just how strong and scrappy I actually am. Now I have to teach my pain the same thing.

THE GREEK PHILOSOPHER PROCRASTINATES (never got around to writing down his stuff).

Ok, I can't put this off any longer. I need to say something. It's been a most eventful week as I have had some kind of (TMI) kidney infection that has left me wallowing like a beached whale on planet couch, unable to waddle very far and at a total deficit in energy. But I am nursing my demon torso back into its usual condition of semi-decay, and expect to be up and on my knees in no time at all. Until that time my motto is: "strictly medicinal", in times of trouble mother Mari comforts me. Kidney stoned, yeh man, I'm hip. Turtley. Microsoft Word up?

THC-TV RETURNS TO BAKE YOUR SHRUNKEN LITTLE BRAIN!

Dig it...THC-TV back on the air! Yuppers, that zany cannabis loving krue with copious quantities of killah kindness are back on channel 77/29 in King County, Washington State at 11:30 Saturday nights! It is FREE! The Hemp Channel Television!

FLOTSAM AND JETSOM

So lots of stimulating stuff has been taking place since we last leaned against the cyber lamp-post together, another four years of Bush is almost guaranteed now...major buzz-kill! In his stupor, the auto-intoxication he gets off of his perceived self-divinity has him poised to un-write the New Deal. One could refer to Bush's policy as the Raw Deal. Privatization of Social Security is intended to be the first step in eradicating the program altogether. It is not like the right wingers and neo-cons deny it. Their contempt for the policies of FDR are obvious and apparent.

The difference between this administration and the preceding republican administrations is that the former ones tried to conceal and downplay their sinister plans. The Bush administration flaunts their brazen takeovers and dares the world to criticize. I can't figure out what Bush is trying to spend faster, money or allies! He may have a lot of political capital, or so he says, and it's a good thing because he has already blown all the financial capital. And the arrogant, stuffy manor by which Bush dealt with the prisoner torture issue is most disturbing. It seems like they are in a vacuum when it comes to understanding how the global Arab community will perceive something, almost as if they are *trying* to piss them off. It can get depressing, or is it just me?

My radical liberal blue state Lilly white pot smoking tattoo'd and pierced hippie ass is one mopey, fatigued little bunger, lemme tell ya! Every time I see Bush's face on the television my gut clenches up and I wanna hurl a techni-color yawn across the living room. I need what is reportedly called a "Bush bucket", but that has not been confirmed as of yet. Sounds totally logical. To Bush and Rove and all those guys family values means working two jobs and being too broke to buy Christmas for your kids.

They talk about their family values, and I think about the civilian deaths in Iraq since we started shit there. Depends which family, I suppose. Manson family values? Sure. Now I get it. It's all about plausible denial, so ya shield yourself from the numbers by not having any. Problem solved. You solve the problem of images of the death, misery and suffering by not allowing the pictures to be shown. You solve the problem of 1,500 coffins coming home by preventing the images from being shown. This administration is inherently shameful. Without shame, their arrogance defines them. They feel vindicated by God himself. This too shall pass White Man. What goes around comes around. I'd hate to have their karma in my Dharma. After all, we're all outta here in 2012, right? Of have I been White Buffaloed?

BUSH UNDERMINES INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT

Fearing that our soldiers will be brought before the tribunal by foreign countries, Bush and his posse have deliberately undermined the court's work. The ICC, the first political body set up to investigate and prosecute individuals accused of crimes against humanity, which could potentially apply to modern day genocide in the Sudan and the Congo or Rawanda.

There was an ad-hoc war crimes tribunal set up previously by the United Nations. The court trying former Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosovic at the Hague, Netherlands. The treaty creating the court was adopted in 1998 at an international conference in Rome following intense negotiations.

After what was called "the bloodiest century in history" by Human Rights Watch, the court's purpose was intended to an avoidance of tragedies like the ones that marked the 20th century. The pact was approved by 120 nations. Not the United States. Not with Afghanistan and Iraq taking place! No way Jose. The court's perception is that the Bush administration is proclaiming that U.S. service members are not subject to its jurisdiction.

It gets better! Two years ago, our reputable congress passed the American Servicemembers' Protection Act, ending military aid to countries that refused to grant amnesty to U.S. nationals suspected of committing war crimes abroad. Well that pretty much lets ya know that they were intending to torture people? Am I jumping to conclusions? If ya have nothing to hide, why would you care? The philosophy that always gets applied to us beatniks, it has to go both ways man.

96 nations, faced with sanctions, have capitulated with the United States by singing immunity agreements. Lots has changed since the United States was at the forefront of building the Human Rights within international law after the second world war. But, as we are dealing with "Old Europe" they were dealing with "Old America".

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