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INTRODUCTION:

Welcome to BobKat's Lair ®™

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A lair is a home; A castle; A burrow; A haven; a place where one should feel safe. To ensure our safety especially in one's lair, we have laws. And some laws cause more harm than good!

This is a good place. There's lots to see and do. It's apolitical while providing non-partisan news about politics, which we can't escape.

Regarding compliance with EU standards, I use no cookies, tracking devices or programs or other personal devices that may be banned in other countries. I will note however that my blog is hosted by Google and I am not responsible for any of that.

My goal is here... to present topics which highlight the plight of people. Why, 2000 years after Caesar Augustus, are we still a people being hurt? With all our advancements in technology, medicine, communications, why are we a people still being hurt? Human nature hasn't changed much, but that doesn't mean it isn't time now for that to happen, and it is undoubtedly happening - hard to see however. This blog is part of that change and a witness to it.

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My blog is dedicated to my family, friends, mentors, and all others whom I am grateful to, and love(d).

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NOTE: Nothing included in my Blog is intended to advocate behavior illicit in nature, or in violation of man-made laws where harm to a living person, animal or the environment is involved. Person's under 17 probably shouldn't be here, though there is far worse out there. Just saying.


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February 17, 2012

UPDATE: PATRICIA SPOTTEDCROW GRANTED EARLY HEARING

*** Update regarding the imprisonment of "drug-Dealer" Patricia Spottedcrow of Oklahoma. I have previous posts HERE... May, 2011 - "TAKEDOWN OF PATRICIA SPOTTEDCROW".
Ms. Spottedcrow - a mother of two living with her own mother, was arrested for selling $31 of marijuana to a (police informant) narc. She lives in Oklahoma and "drug laws" are pretty severe in that state.
She was found guilty of selling a "dangerous drug", with her mother as an accomplice. $31 worth!
Would have to be a seriously "dangerous drug" to get Ms. Spottedcrow 14 years in prison, and her mother 30 years, suspended (to care for the two children).
The "dangerous drug" was, (marijuana) a joint one day, and another joint several months later. [a "joint" is when cannabis herb is ground up, similar to tobacco, then rolled up into a "cigarette shape" which is usually twisted at each end.] A joint generally is half the size or smaller than that of a commercial cigarette. The size of a joint has grown smaller since the 1960's - 70's.
The court was lenient at the time of sentencing, to suspend Ms. Spottedcrow's mother from prison too. Prosecutors argued that there was a "major drug sale operation" - their evidence, two "marijuana cigarettes".
So many more serious crimes occur that I'm hesitant to even speak it: manslaughter, deaths from DUI, assault, domestic abuse (often triggered by alcohol abuse), sexual assault, rape, theft, child abuse... the list goes on. The penalties for these crimes often far less than the crime of selling two joints.
Constitutional Violation? Yeah... Big-Time!!!
Recently a judge granted her a 4 year reduction in her sentence, bringing it down to 8 years. And more recently, according to an update courtesy of Jack Herer.com, a parole board has agreed to hear her case early, and decide whether she is worthy of , well, parole.
There's much in the way of epidemics and deaths due to particular dangers... never have I read cannabis is the cause. How many celebrities of late for example have died as a result of cannabis?
None... Nada.
Best wishes to Ms. Spottedcrow during her upcoming hearing.
Nowhere has it been more obvious that a punishment doesn't fit the crime as in her case.

February 11, 2012

LIFE: THE DREAM WITHIN A DREAM...

Concluding the previous three posts titled "Life Sucks, Then You Die..."
I will not even begin to try to understand people who commit suicide and take down others in the act. It makes no sense to me. The act of a suicide is tragedy enough.
There is an element to life that does appear to cry out, that "life sucks, then you die...", but it is but one of an infinite number of variables when it comes to our choices in life.
Life is like a dream within a dream. Some dreams are lucid and quite clear... memorable, other dreams are nightmares, impossible to detach from, or vague, maybe not even remembered.
Who hasn't looked back 5 years and realized nothing had changed...? Or that everything had changed?
Such is life.
Edgar Allen Poe had it correct when he wrote "A Dream Within A Dream...":
We are the dream, living in a dream. That is a fact. It is also a fact that our actions affect the dream, and those in it, just as those in our dreams affects us.
The irony is, with dreams, it's so personal. We cherish our dream(s). We cherish who we are, who we are, within the dream. I call this our dream atmosphere; the dream we live in, the society and politics of the external dream; our heritage, family traditions, the morals and mores we learn and accept, all become part of the dream atmosphere.
Whether your dreams are nightmares or a form of heaven, mundane or confused, however you perceive them, we are all one, we all live them, and no one is a rock, unchanged over time.
Living your dream...and the only question I have is, are you hurting others or yourself? I would hope not. But the answer is what makes or breaks a crime. How obsessed we are with crimes, and how numerous those crimes. One would think being human is a matter of commonsense... the acts of being kind and respectful of life and others. It's no wonder so many of us shake our heads daily with the latest news of hurt.
There is no need for governments, for example, to enact a nightmare on the public. Such actions would only backfire... but it happens all the time. To the extent that we ask ourselves exactly who does government serve?
"Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living." Anais Nin
To whomever is living a nightmare... there is no need. Reality is subjective; and provides for choices in any dream.
It's something of an irony that around age 6, I remember being with my sister and her friend singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat..." an irony in, here I am at 57 singing the same old song...
Life is..."But A Dream."
Live long, be kind, and prosper...

January 30, 2012

"LIFE SUCKS, THEN YOU DIE"... IS THAT WHAT YOU BELIEVE? - PART THREE

Wow... I met a wonderful woman online. I courted her the past 5 months. We are a bit distant from each other, but we made the best of it. Two weekends ago I helped her move into a new apartment. No "over-night guests" at the old place, so now, at least I had a couch to sleep on.
Not. She's dumping me. Yeah. She really is.
Which brings me to the subject of suicide - taking one'own life.
First let me make clear I have no licenses in psychology. I'm not a clinician of any kind. I simply have experience. An my good, old, trusty BA in English - makes me a legit writer, yeah. Power to Education.
Socrates...
I always thought Socrates was the first of ancient persons to take their own life. He drank a lethal brew of hemlock.
It turns out, he was sentenced to death by a jury in 399 BC, because his views were considered unconventional - yes, simple as that. He chose his form of death.
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"Freedom of the soul from the body". Suicide.
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I've had my fair share of exposures to suicides. There was an employee of mine, whose husband hung himself during X-mas. The owner of the facility we worked refused to give her time off to attend to his body and other matters. I was her manager, until the next day when i quit the job calling the owner an asshole, which he was. There went my resume listing "manager"...
During my time as a custodian at a community college in the 1970's I made two unforgettable acquaintance'. I was in my early 20's and both women were beautiful, very beautiful. One woman made me think of the French, Joan of Ark, short, dark hair, a face to love, and experiences... she was 26 when I met her.
The other woman was a model... in the sense she was beautiful, graceful, but by no means dumb. We had some very good discussions, but then one day she opened up about her body image. She hated herself. She felt the human body was wrong, not right, awkward. She decided she would rather be dead than living in her body. She did so, committed suicide. She was at most 22.
My French friend, she told me one day she was in the nursing program to learn how to properly kill herself. Age 27 she shot herself at the local general hospital, in the restroom.
There was my cousin's best friend, a beautiful woman I got to know well with 3 kiddos and a husband. We used to share "feelings" together. We had fun together. She killed herself and i adopted a kitten the day my cousin and I visited her husband after her death. The cat was my closest companion for the next 11 years, until he died... with him, she died forever, and I was devastated.
Fact is: My father made me promise not to kill myself. He could see I was capable of it from a young age. And so far, so good. But considering the reason's why some choose suicide and others don't... maybe it's the fact I was a 70's person, and going to a therapist was in style, along with self-help books and a lot of questions about "Who Am I", and "What Is My Purpose in Life?" We embraced the challenge. Many of us benefited from the unusual therapies. We took personal risks other generations didn't dare take. For many of us, the "baby-boomer" generation, the results were mixed, but overall positive. For others, not so good.
I'm an idealist, and always around the corner is a better life... some would call that hopeful, others would describe that as being a basic foundation of the American principal, the never ending "pursuit of happiness" that our culture encourages, or at least as a "Constitutional ideal". I'm finding that in reality, life is indeed difficult, and finding happiness is more and more elusive... The very nature of what got Socrates sentenced to death, for example, is still alive and well in 21st century America... the overt demand for conformity. Some people do better shedding the need to conform than others, or the ability to conform and find pleasure in that, however, even successful people have trouble feeling as one with society sometimes, and find they can't live with themselves. And it's sad. I don't believe it has to be that way. But again, I'm an idealist.
Feeling awkward about ourselves or our body... ? Granted, sometimes that is unavoidable, especially when we obsess about it, yet often, it is simply a difficult task as we become more keenly aware of our differences among others, our physical form, or the burdens we carry.
Seems the role of government in that respect would be more one of acceptance, and less frivolous regulations when it comes to what rights adults have in pursuit of their dreams. But alas, governments, religions, and group ideals don't often help, instead, they are designed to enforce a ideal of their own, a lock-step of sorts, and the result is a large segment of the population doesn't feel like they "fit in".
I'll conclude with a very touching, recent story of a SOAP Actor who recently took his own life. Nick Santino, unemployed, was "forced" to euthanize his dog Rocco, on Nick's 47th birthday. Nick got Rocco, a mixed pit-bull, from a shelter, lived in an apartment complex the originally allowed pets. They changed the rules, but "grand-fathered" pre-existing pets as okay to keep.
But for Nick that was at a price...
Santino couldn't live after that... and that's all it takes.
Hey, us human beings, we're a tough lot. But we've got feelings. Part of those feelings is where do we fit into humanity, our brethren?
I can tell you suicide is not the answer, but the solution is complicated. It requires standing back from the present and reassessing the future. With more than two solutions present at all times, one's third eye can often see a way out. I've witnessed it many times. Yet still, those who took their own lives, it's so sad, as it still seems so unnecessary, unjustified and unfair to us still living.

January 29, 2012

"LIFE SUCKS, THEN YOU DIE"... IS THAT WHAT YOU BELIEVE? - PART TWO

The phrase above (source: WordPress) is from Dante's Inferno, part one of a 14th century, epic poem titled, "Divine Comedy". It's about Dante's walk through Hell's 9 circle's of suffering guided by the Roman poet, Virgil.
"The poem begins on the day before Good Friday in the year 1300. The narrator, Dante himself, is thirty-five years old, and thus "halfway along our life's path" (Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita)—half of the Biblical life expectancy of seventy (Psalm 90:10). The poet finds himself lost in a dark wood in front of a mountain, assailed by three beasts (a lion, a lonza [rendered as "leopard" or "leopon"], and a she-wolf) he cannot evade, and unable to find the "straight way" (diritta via)—also translatable as "right way"—to salvation. Conscious that he is ruining himself and that he is falling into a "deep place" (basso loco) where the sun is silent (l sol tace), Dante is at last rescued by the Roman poet Virgil, who claims to have been sent by Beatrice, and the two of them begin their journey to the underworld. Each sin's punishment in Inferno is a contrapasso, a symbolic instance of poetic justice; for example, fortune-tellers have to walk forwards with their heads on backwards, unable to see what is ahead, because they tried, through forbidden means, to look ahead to the future in life. Such a contrapasso "functions not merely as a form of divine revenge, but rather as the fulfilment of a destiny freely chosen by each soul during his or her life.""
I would say my goal in life is to prove that life can suck, only to die, anonymous for eternity, but that it doesn't have to be that way.
It is an ironic time for me to say that, as the truth is, presently, life sucks big-time, and I expect to die any day now. BUT, I know what I know... and once a feeling of success is experienced fully, it never goes away.
Never.
Nor do experiences with guilt attached, or failure; letting someone down or failing them; making a stupid decision and possibly causing harm, death or damage. Ahhh... growing up.
Worse yet, is being an innocent victim... getting raped by someone you trust, taking the fall for something you didn't do; being misunderstood; being bullied.
There's a lot in the news lately about brutal, senseless crimes. I'm not going to name any explicitly, but either it's the media tends to cover and report these crimes more that ever, or I'm simply more sensitive to their existence.
There's no question that given the economic trauma of the last ten years that quality of life has gone south. More people are finding themselves desperate and depressed. It's sad; a sad state of affairs.
But the worst thing a person can do is what this post warned: "Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here".
The time may come to do that... but the real battle in life is with death. One can never lose hope. One always has more than two choices in life. The answer always lies in what the question is that's asked.
During the 1970's I can honestly say I lived my life to the fullest. I can never forget those years, though it pains me how the memories from those days fade. That to me was life in all it's different shades and colors. Heaven and Hell.
Yeah, not all memories fade so quickly. The really painful ones, they never go away.
Next Post, Why Suicide, Why is Non-Conformity as Bad Thing, Why Take Others Down With Yourself?