Just finished reading The Eden Express by Mark Vonnegut (son of Kurt). Trisha and paulnotpaul read it and had rave reviews. It is, as the title says, a memoir of insanity. A trip through the mind and experiences of a young man learning about and struggling to cope with his progressively worse schizophrenia. It's a good book for a lot of reasons. It is as well written as any book on the subject could hope to be. Basically it tells the story of Mark as he leaves college and rather than 'enter the world' takes off with friends to start something 'new' and 'radical' in the wilds of British Columbia. Right off the bat this appealed to me, so many of my own fantasies that somehow were made real. Of course, the book doesn't stay so great. Mark starts experiencing more and more episodes until he reaches the point where his friends admit him into an institution. Well, I don't know how to analyze it really, I'm gonna stop now. If you wanna learn a little bit about mental illness from someone who knows, take a read. It's well worth it though. It will make you slightly crazier though I think, at least it did for me.

This is a great quote from the book. Not much to do with psychosis, but very good: "We were nuns milling about in between two opposing armies, keeping both sides from seeing each other except through our eyes." That is maybe a good thing to be. Very hard though I suppose, but perhaps rewarding, or maybe you just go crazy.

Here's another Stickboy [inlink]stickboy&id=42,[/inlink]

It is better to travel hopefully than it is to arrive. - R. L. Stevenson

This is the opening quote to the first chapter of The Eden Express->see above

Who doesn't secretly suspect it? Thst Bushiecrew is gonna find weapons one way or another in Iraq. Whether they're our weapons imported or their weapons hidden very very well. So maybe it's a conspiracy theory and all but take a look .

"BASRA -– Fifty days after the first reports that the U.S. forces were unloading weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in southern Iraq, new reports about the movement of these weapons have been disclosed.

Sources in Iraq speculate that occupation forces are using the recent unrest in Iraq to divert attention from their surreptitious shipments of WMD into the country.

An Iraqi source close to the Basra Governor’s Office told the MNA that new information shows that a large part of the WMD, which was secretly brought to southern and western Iraq over the past month, are in containers falsely labeled as containers of the Maeresk shipping company and some consignments bearing the labels of organizations such as the Red Cross or the USAID in order to disguise them as relief shipments."

A little added fun: . A report from Syracuse University . states that the IRS has audited fewer and fewer corporations as oppossed to more and more individuals over the past ten years. So they pay less tax [inlink]terry,182[/inlink] and have less a chance of being questioned than people. It's craziness. Ummm...I wanna talk about Bush and his speech too...but, there's just so much to say, and so little time to say it in. I wanna try to pick the top five or so blunders (out of maybe 500, man, he was soooo bad). I really can't believe he is really our president. Truly amazing. No pretension at intelligence whatsoever. None. Blows me away. Like I said, maybe later....

And let's go kill us some cute little seals. Hell yeah. The hunt is sponsonred by the Canadian government as a way of keeping the harp seal population within limits. Last year's death toll was around 300,000, and this year an increased quota expects to produce over 350,000. Make some fine caps, I'm sure. But, so cute. So cute. Why can't we just kill the ugly ones? Apparently there are over 5 million off Canada's east coast. Enough for a whole inflatable sealskin hot-air balloon.