Thanksgiving Appetizer

Whilst we're all doing the do this Thursday, consider the following.  Any conclusions are left up to you lot;  I'm merely the messenger, here.

Dig this:

The Five Stages of Collapse
Dmitry Orlov

Financial Collapse. Faith in "business as usual" is lost.

Commercial Collapse. Faith that "the market shall provide" is lost.

Political Collapse. Faith that "the government will take care of you" is lost.

Social Collapse. Faith that "your people will take care of you" is lost.

Cultural Collapse. Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost.

Pleasant Holiday, Fellow Babies.

More anon..........

Ten Years On

Today marks a bittersweet anniversary: ten years ago to the day, my dread "malaise" began.  It cost me plenty - everything one could possibly lose in this life, I lost, barring one or two exceptions.  Material goods; emotional equilibrium; moral stability / a focused spiritual direction; the ability to support ones' self effectively; hell, even simple peace-of-mind - one and all were stripped away from me over the years.  And if that weren't enough, good old Thanatos Hisownself popped up on THREE separate occasions this past decade, most intent on keeping "our" Date.  Which I somehow managed to avoid each time out.  True to my strong penchant for black humor, I'm quite sure I'm sowing some ferocious karma in the "Final Destination" vein, if you catch me drift?

Yeah, I know; mine is hardly a unique tale -  ubiquitous is much closer to the bone - but painting as gloomy an initial portrait as I possibly can here is nothing more than me doing the writers' norm of concocting a juicy hook for the piece.  It's that simple.  Be that as it may, the last ten years have taught me that there is no more painful, cruel, vicious, bloody, vile, petty, wicked, absurdly frenetic, violent, nerve-wracking, mind-deadening, soul-destroying, utterly self-destructive experience known to mankind.............. than life itself.  And in the end, nobody gets out alive.

Oh yeah, almost forgot: there's also a downside.

Please join me in a grim chuckle over that last bit - black humor is still humor, and I love to share.  Y'all won't be creamed by the PC-Thought Police, believe me.  I've got your back, so let fly.  It's all good, as they say.  And speaking of good in general, it was Good in Particular that has seen me through every last step of the past decade.  Said Good can be evenly split between my family, and Our Lord Jesus.  All had their hands very full indeed with me on many, many occasions; and all kept coming back for more, Lord only knows why.  Thanks to their combined and collective safety net, I've been able to concentrate on the healing / rehabilitation process pretty much exclusively.

I'll never be 100% again; some wounds I've suffered simply won't heal in the mortal realm.  Once more, a fairly common scenario; only mentioned in passing.  Chasing a PhD from the School of Hard Knocks hardly comes free, can be quite excruciating at times, but somehow still seems to be a goal worth pursuing, the way I see things today.  And as such, I will continue the Good Fight indefinitely.  If nothing else, the last ten years have proven one fact - I'm a fairly competent drawn-out seige, pitched-battle fighter that simply refuses to quit.  A lifetime of trench warfare?  Yeah, I can do that.  Who knows - in a few more years, I might even actually start to dig it again; stranger happenings, and all that mess, kapish?

And so it goes.

More anon.