Good Friday always makes me think back to the First House of Clocks. One of the more notorious parties we had there was the Be Bad on Good Friday Party. We crucified Ian and played Pin the Nail of Jesus. I remember someone shouting "the beer's on fire!" and rushing to put out the flames. You know it's a real party when you have a beer fire.

We had music in the old tinfoil covered playroom. The old playroom was crazy. I mean, really crazy. Tinfoil walls, strange paintings along with random items screwed into the ceiling. I had written on the walls and the floors. Blissfully hopeful things and abysmally awful things. The pictures on the walls didn't match up spatially with their frames. A Twister mat was the table cloth. It was me. Me then. Strange, cluttered, mismatched, bright, stark, broken, glowing, and scary. I'm different now. I am no longer that room. I am breaking out of a chrysalis, not sure yet of what I have become.

A German citizen who said he was kidnapped by the Central Intelligence Agency and tortured in a prison in Afghanistan lost his last chance to seek redress in court today when the Supreme Court declined to consider his case. The justices’ refusal to take the case of Khaled el-Masri let stand a March 2 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va. That court upheld a 2006 decision by a federal district judge, who dismissed Mr. Masri’s lawsuit on grounds that trying the case could expose state secrets. ... Mr. Masri contended in his suit that he was seized by local law enforcement officials while vacationing in Macedonia on New Year’s Eve 2003. At the time, he was 41 years old and an unemployed car salesman. “They asked a lot of questions — if I have relations with Al Qaeda, Al Haramain, the Islamic Brotherhood,” Mr. Masri said in a 2005 interview with The New York Times. “I kept saying no, but they did not believe me.” After 23 days, he said, he was turned over to C.I.A. operatives, who flew him to a secret C.I.A. prison in Kabul. There, Mr. Masri said, he was kept in a small, filthy cell and shackled, drugged and beaten while being interrogated about his supposed ties to terrorist organizations. At the end of May 2004, Mr. Masri said, he was released in a remote part of Albania without ever having been charged with a crime. full story

This is outrageous. The blocking of a trial with spurious claims of "state secrets" is, in my opinion, tantamount to an admission of guilt. This crime is even more blatant by the fact that this German citizen was flown to Kabul — an occupied territory of the United States. Does anyone really doubt who's in charge in Afghanistan or Iraq? The crimes of puppet governments are crimes of the puppeteer. It is a further crime that Khaled el-Masri cannot peruse justice in an American court and it is likely that neither those who kidnapped and tortured him nor those that ordered the kidnapping and torture will ever be extradited to stand trial in Germany.

I was just about to take a shower in purpleglitter's apartment, and noticed there had been a minor back-up issue. Mostly dried, and not to bad. Nevertheless, a crust had formed over the drain, essentially sealing it. Not wanting to use anything that might pose a danger to the birds, I decided to use the remainder of the pseudomoonshine I purchased over the summer to clean the tub and unplug the drain. It worked like a charm, however now the house smells like I've just thrown a heavily alcohol-laden party. Ah, well - it will dissipate.

I completely missed a friend's birthday gather today, because I screwed up when it was. I feel like such an idiot.

Reading about the death of a LiveJournal user that I never interacted with, I find myself shocked and appalled by the behaviour of their so-called friends. They are attempting to organize some sort of "memorial concert" at the same time they had one of his cats put to sleep because no one could be bothered give the beloved animal its daily medication. Some friends. Have fun at your fucking party.

I had a great time this evening celebrating purpleglitter's birthday with zarthon, recoiling, and of course purpleglitter. I made blackberry sours which were loved by all and gave purpleglitter a framed picture of her I did in pastels. I hope she had a good birthday. Berv love Lake.

Looking back through my old paper journals, I found a wonderful photo of purpleglitter taken at one of our parties at the old house_of_clocks in 1999.

gacked from kyrene:

How Spoiled Are You?

( long survey )

I've been very dizzy and fally today with a smaller degree of twitchiness. I did manage to make it to dan4th's New Year's waffle party. I particularly liked dan4th's gingerbread waffles. I enjoyed being at the party and having good talkings with the people, familiar and new, that were there. When it came time to leave, dan4th offered me a ride because I had been having "dizzy" episodes off and on while at the party. I declined because I felt guilty about taking him away from the party. I didn't want to be a burden. That was a mistake on my part. I made it halfway to the bus stop from dan4h's house when I ended up on the snow the first time. Went down again across the street from the stop. And again waiting at the stop for the bus. The third time, a passerby was worried and called the authorities. Luckily I was able to get up and on a bus before they arrived. However, I had an unusually intense episode while sitting on the bus and lost consciousness. I ended up missing my stop and getting off at Stop & Shop. Stop & Shop is a 20-30 minute walk to the house_of_clocks when I'm doing well, and I didn't have enough money to get back on the bus. I used my last 50¢ to call purpleglitter and ask her for a ride home. Unfortunately she was in Braintree with zarthon and couldn't help me, so I had to walk. It was quite cold and the walk didn't begin well. Almost a half hour after I left Stop & Shop, I had ended up on the ground four times and had traversed relatively little distance. I almost ended up crying in the snow because I didn't see how I was going to make it home. However, I did end up breaking out of the episode cycle and was soon able to walk the rest of the way home largely without problem. Even so, I felt a large wave of trappedness. I don't like feeling that I cannot leave the house without depending on the assistance of others. I don't want people to feel obligated to give me a ride home every time I visit them. I'm worried that people won't want to see me because of that. I feel like I was already a burden and now I'm becoming a greater and greater one. I know that things may not remain this way, that when I see my neurologist again I might get meds that might help me. But with so much fighting, I don't have faith in the medical establishment anymore. I don't have faith things will get better. Maybe I should be more optimistic, but I can't get myself to be. I just can't.

Over the last several days, I've been going out more than I have in quite a while.

Wednesday night, zarthon took purpleglitter and I out to Uno's to celebrate purpleglitter's fabulous new job. zarthon accidentally spilt my entire Second City Whisky Sour on me as soon as it arrived, and I smelt completely like a brewery. I used the foamy handsoap in the Uno's bathroom to wash the aromatic drink off my clothing. The rest of the dinner went wonderfully and their new olde fashion tomatoe soup was quite lovely.

Thursday night, purpleglitter and I went over to iamacliche's and recoiling's apartment for a small holiday gathering. I always love hanging out with them and it is convenient that they live so close. They gave me, among other things, a turtle coprolite and a polished fiber optic piece of ulexite. I went through a phase in the early nineties that I was very into geology and rocks and minerals. I lost my entire rock and mineral collection when I was homeless, and am glad to add some nice new specimens to my very small current collection.

Friday night, I met dicotomygrrl at the Diesel Café. We shared a chocolate mint square and played a game of chess. I still remember dicotomygrrl's speech about chess at my birthday party last year, which was the last big party that has happened at the house_of_clocks. She gave me a rose, which I was hoping to put in some water when I got home, but unfortunately left in the back of Glen's van.

Last night, I went to sophiaserpentia's birthday gathering. Early on in the evening I committed a minor faux pas. I'm not sure if anyone noticed and if they did I don't know if they cared. However, I felt really bad about it. It took me a little bit to get past my embarrassment and guilt to get back into the feeling of the gathering, but once I did I had a swell time. I got to hang out with friends as well as meet a handful of new and interesting people (all on LiveJournal), including galaxygrrl, who has been on my friends list for some time but never have met in real life.

That's a whole lot of social activities in a short number of days for me. I'm used to sitting at home the majority of my evenings. I like getting out and if I can get my neurological problems taken care of and find a way to bring in a small amount of extra cash, I would like to make a regular habit of it.

When I arrived home from the asylum, I found a letter stating that I had yet another overdraft charge. I seem to be utterly incapable of keeping track of my balance and the $25 fees add up. I decided that I should just cash my SSDI check instead of depositing it and handle things in cash. I headed out to Arlington center, and only fell once on my way there and was able to get up quickly. I did end up sitting on a bench for 15 minutes shortly thereafter waiting to regain my coordination.

My first stop was Leader Bank. There I was told that since they are not publicly traded they are exempt from being required to cash treasury department checks for non-customers. No luck. I went on to Bank of America. There I was told as a non-customer I had to have two forms of identification for them to cash the check. I only had my licence with me. Strike two.

I decided to try my luck at Cambridge Savings Bank. I knew my account was negative there, but I hoped they would cash my with just one form of identification anyway. The teller told me the system wouldn't let her do it because my account was overdrawn. I asked by how much, and it was only $3.76. Aparently I had a little over $20 in the account when the overdraft fee hit. Seeing as the amount was so small, I told her to take the $3.76 out of the check, cash my check as a customer with one form of identification, then close my account. She did, and I'm now done with banks (except what will be my monthly trip to cash my check).

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purpleglitter drove me to my therapy appointment at 5:15. I signed in at the front desk and waited. 5:30, no therapist. The receptionist paged her. 5:45, no therapist. The receptionist paged her again, then noted that my appointment time was actually at 6:00 and not my normal time, and that's probably why my therapist wasn't responding. I had things to do, so I just left.

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purpleglitter dropped me off at the corner and went up to her house to bake merryperseis's birthday cake. I fell heading from the corner to my house, spilling my Monster. Several people asked if I was okay, but no one called anyone on me. I got back in the house and ended up lying in bed for some stupid reason and fell asleep. I drifted in and out of sleep and seizure for a couple hours, having nasty dreams that everything was getting worse and that I was being locked away forever. Finally, merryperseis came into my room and helped me out of bed. I ended up falling on the floor in the hall and sat there until I felt balanced enough to go down the stairs.

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recoiling, purpleglitter, and iamacliche were downstairs and we had quite a wonderful time celebrating the anniversary of merryperseis's birth. Towards 1:00 I started feeling very twitchy again, and couldn't really get up from the couch. All the non-residents of the house_of_clocks had left, and merryperseis had to go to purpleglitter's apartment and pick up my meds, my Metamucil cookies, and mazzycat's tuna for me. I was planning on just crashing on the couch, but did eventually make it up to my room and to sleep.

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Everyday is an adventure nowadays. Some moments I feel so elated I could fly, others I feel suicidal hopelessness, and others I'm simply on the ground. I have some very difficult moral choices to make. The kind where there is no good choice and I must find the one that is least wrong.

Another day today. Another day again. Days just seem to come one after another these days.

It is awfully late in the day to be posting this, but here is yesterday's Project Three Meals. Exercise went wonderfully. Got in a good three fourths an hour wandering around looking for kyrene's party. Foodwise, well, I ate a lot and a lot of it wasn't healthy: macaroni and cheese with purpleglitter; bean and rice pilaf, cream puffs, cheese and crackers, marinated mozzarella, cheese-its, patatoe chips, triple chocolate cake, apples dipped in caramelly goodness, ricotta and spinach pierogies, ass kicking peanuts, chocolate cream pie, and other assorted foodstuffs at the party. So yeah, I guess I'll count that as a day I didn't make it.

I had fun at kyrene's party tonight, even though merryperseis and I got quite lost on our way there. I wore a new hat I picked up today at a tag sale for 35¢. It's bright red and purple and green and blue and orange with baubles at the tips of it's points.

I got to see lady_babalon and sophiaserpentia, and met some new people like brontosproximo. There was quite a lot of food stuffs there, and that will make for quite and interesting Project Three Meals post tomorrow. The wine flowed like wine, and I drank quite a bit of it, including some pomegranate wine which was quite tasty. Yum.

My favorite part of the party was teetering on the totter with brontosproximo. I haven't teetered on a totter in a very long time.

I'm glad I'm back in social mode.