They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

Waterboarding doesn't seem like it would be a fun thing to do. The most interesting part of watching the video is how little time it took. According to what I read in this article, if you actually were drowning you would be insane when you died.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808

I've never been shot with a gun, so I don't know what that's like. I have nearly suffocated to death on several occasions, and had scary incidents in which my life was threatened by suffocation. I doubt seriously I would volunteer to undergo what this journalist did. He is a brave man, and a very dedicated journalist.

I have been in quite a few situations in which I have felt helpless, and thought I would die from putting myself in the situation that threatened my life. Usually, I was only really afraid after the fact. If I had ended up dead, I probably wouldn't die afraid, because I'd be dead before I allowed myself to realize that this was it, and I was truly dying. I think I might one of those people who won't even realize I'm dead, and I'll have to be fetched by their most convincing angel.

It's my opinion that I write differently when I'm writing to a specific person or group than when I'm writing, like now, to the public at large. I don't have an image of a particular person right now that I'm addressing. In both cases, whether I'm writing to my true love of the moment or the heavenly host, I like to see what I'll write down in response to whatever urge I've hitched a ride with.

Several of the people I've told my road stories to have commented that they didn't think they could do what I did, because they couldn't stand by the side of the road as long as it sometimes took to get a ride. It could seem like a trial to a lotta people, including me, but when you're standing by the road on the edge of some small town where everybody knows everybody, and that you're not one of them, there ain't nothing else to do but stand there and either curse your fate or figure out some way to amuse yourself until the ride you know is coming keeps their nebulous appointment.

I'm not on the active list of but one discussion group presently, and nobody, including me, has written a post on that list for a long time. On the Yahoo Group list, which used to be e.groups before Yahoo bought them out, I change the settings on the Thomas group so that sometimes I received mail from the members of the group, and other times, like now, I change the settings so that I don't receive individual posts from the group.

It's not a very active discussion list anymore. A few years ago there might be 50-100 posts a day or more, and what I wrote didn't attract much attention. Now, the list attracts maybe ten posts on a good day, and my posts and replies could be and has been the majority of them. I'm a little fascinated that this group or any other e-mail discussion group still survives, at all. The guy who started the group is believed to have died of old age or gotten so senile he couldn't make sense anymore. The group is run by a couple of moderators who, for the most part seem pretty bored with the whole deal, and who keep the group going out of some misplaced values.

The Thomas group is the last group I've been active on, in the past, and not much gets said that inspires anybody any more. That's why discussion groups fail, in my opinion, because the people who subscribe to discussion groups eventually write all they have to say on the subjects at hand.

I once subscribed to a dog lover's group to see what i might write on this subject even though I don't own a dog. I've never had but one dog for a pet, and I didn't keep that dog long because it got on my nerves by needing more attention than I wanted to give to it.

It's not that I don't like dogs okay. Just this morning and practically every day my brother's dogs (all six of them) come into my house to get a pat on the head, and then they leave again. It's interesting to me that dogs seem to know when I've had enough with the petting thing, and walk off to leave me alone. Not all the dogs they've had leave well enough alone, but this group seems to have a natural instinct for it.

I do like tha fact that these dogs are around to warn me if anybody comes on the property. I like that they do it deliberately. Even though we see each other about every day, and they come and go in and out of my house at will when the outside door is open, if I walk over to visit my brother, they bark like crazy to let him know I'm coming. They don't bark at me, they bark to warn him or his wife that somebody/anybody is approaching. They will bite. Even me if I don't observe the amenities.

If for no other reason, I've lost my interest in young, impregnable females because the whole deal of my interest in them at any time has to do with procreation. Why would that seem unusual? Well, from my perspective it's not unusual at all, but from their perspective, they seem to think it means more than nature making them look desirable to men for the purpose of procreation.

I could be wrong, but they only find out they've deluded themselves about their real value to men after they can't have babies any more. I find it awkward or uncomfortable looking at attractive women due to the fact that the power they draw to themselves as procreators will be gone one day, and they could possibly live for a good, long time realizing the thrill is gone.