A prominent Roman Catholic bishop in Mexico blamed eroticism on television and internet pornography for child abuse by priests, in the latest incendiary comments on sex scandals in the church.
"With so much invasion of eroticism, sometimes it's not easy to stay celibate or to respect children," Bishop Felipe Arizmendi said during an annual meeting of Mexican bishops near Mexico City on Thursday (local time).
"If on television and on the internet and in so many media outlets there is pornography, it is very difficult to stay pure and chaste," said Bishop Arizmendi, an influential bishop from the colonial town of San Cristobal de las Casas in southern Mexico.
The timing of his comments comes as Pope Benedict turned 83 on Friday and the Catholic hierarchy has been rattled by revelations of sexual abuse scandals in parishes around the world.
It also follows several controversial comments made by Catholic clergy, including on Monday when the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said priest paedophilia was linked to homosexuality not celibacy.
"Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and paedophilia, but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and paedophilia," he told a news conference in Santiago, Chile.
Mexico is home to the world's second-largest Roman Catholic population after Brazil and the country has been rocked by its own share of allegations against Catholic leaders.
Today a UK-wide ban on the drug Mephedrone, otherwise known as Meow Meow, becomes law, meaning a potential five year prison term for those caught possessing the substance. But several police forces are saying that they will operate a week-long amnesty while others are saying they will target dealers rather than seeking out users. London's biggest meph-heads are gathering tomorrow night to use up their stash in one final blowout, and according to them a "Central London club has offered us their venue for free and is even supplying Philip Starck brushed aluminium tables and Tiffany silver keyfobs from which to do our bumps of Meph". Apparently "one of the biggest DJs on the M-CAT scene is doing a set of specially sped-up meph sounds for at least 16 hours" and they're inviting requests - from "Love Cats" to "Stray Cat Strut".
Meanwhile, federal law enforcement agencies mounted a massive operation across Arizona Thursday targeting van operators allegedly involved in smuggling undocumented migrants from Mexico. Nearly fifty people were arrested, and more than 800 federal agents were involved in the bust, that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is touting as its largest-ever human smuggling case.
To celebrate the third annual Record Store Day today, The Rolling Stones will release a limited edition, individually numbered, 7" single featuring the previously unreleased track "Plundered My Soul." This newly unearthed track from the "Exile On Main Street" recording sessions will first be available exclusively with independent music stores participating in Record Store Day. The b-side features the newly remastered version of "All Down The Line" - both tracks are from the forthcoming "Exile On Main Street" expanded editions available May 18, 2010, in the US.
What a double bill! The Friday night had seen The Ramones supported by Talking Heads at Strathclyde University. Only The Ramones had played in the UK previously. (I think I may have written about these gigs here before but what can I say...? That weekend was the first time I met Allan Jones from the Melody Maker, a story that he revisited in his regular column 'Stop Me If You have Heard This Before' at the back of 'Uncut', a couple of years ago. It was very strange to be confronted with my 17 year old self especially as I was reading it with two of my kids who are older now than I was then. I remarked that I had hardly changed - which I thought was good! They thought that was tragic!) A couple of other things...yes that was ANOTHER poster that I used to have and also Steven Daly from Orange Juice then, Vanity Fair now was working up in Listen Records at the time and he gave me a great recording of Television either from this night or of the only other time that they played in Glasgow the first time around (with the Only Ones supporting). If anyone does have a copy of that still and wants to share... What were the concerts like...what do you think? Ah memories!
“March 9th 1987 began as a normal day for railwayman Wesley MacDonald as he made up a train of 50 cars of ore at a mine in northern Canada. But that all changed when the brakes failed to hold the load and Wesley suddenly found himself aboard a runaway train. This programme tells the story of what happened next, featuring actual audio footage of the radio communication between him and the rail traffic controller as he wrestles with the decision on whether to jump or take his chances onboard.” Ash International released the full recording of the conversations that took place between Wesley, the driver of the runaway train, and Alfie, his controller, in 1994 as Ash 1.9. This vinyl edition is deleted, but the audio may be downloaded as a MP3 by clicking here. Originally broadcast on Sunday 18th October 2009 on BBC Radio 4. By the way...
The news that Sony were to stop sending out physical CD's for review purposes led to CMU giving five reasons why they felt that critics would rebel against the notion of reviewing 'streams' of the album. As well as legitimate concerns that listening to an album to review didn't just take place while sitting at a computer they also pointed out "that their reviewers were not paid for their work, and that a perk of the job was the get a CD in the post which, if they liked the album, they could keep it"... and of course if it was a pile of shit you could immediately flog it down the Record & Tape Exchange and speaking as someone who worked for the Melody Maker back in the 70's I can assure you that that was a nice little earner (allegedly *ahem*!!!)
Finally "a number of journalists pointed out that the PC technology being used by some media - especially regional and local media - is hardly bang up to date, with some still using versions of Windows which first surfaced in the 1990s. For these people many of the digital preview systems simply don't work."
A controversial cult movie by Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, repeatedly banned in Australia since it was made in 1975, has been deemed suitable for DVD release.
However, Salo, which features scenes of physical, mental and sexual torture, is being released only on condition the DVD includes nearly three hours of additional material to give it "context".
The cult art film has become a cause celebre of anti-censorship campaigners. Banned after its release, it was cleared for screening in 1993 before the then Office of Film and Literature Classification re-instituted an Australia-wide ban in 1998. Local distributor Shock tried and failed in 2008 to have Salo cleared for DVD release.
The Classification Board has granted a R 18+ (restricted) rating for a modified version of Salo o le 120 giornate di Sodoma to be available in DVD format with the consumer advice "Scenes of torture and degradation, sexual violence and nudity".
Pasolini's film, based on the Marquis de Sade's book The 120 Days of Sodom, includes scenes of sexual degradation and violence. However, its Australian censorship history, and the strident opposition to its screening, has largely focused upon whether some of the participants were under 18.
April 20th (4/20) has long been associated with marijuana, both marijuana use and marijuana activism. Thousands of Americans will gather on that day at rallies in Boston, Boulder, New York, Santa Cruz, Seattle and other cities. For people who prefer to relax with a joint instead of a beer or martini it's a time to celebrate. For those who don't use marijuana it's a time to stand up in support of their friends, family, and fellow citizens who face arrest for nothing more than what they put into their body. For the Drug Policy Alliance and the drug policy reform movement 4/20 represents something even bigger.
The movement to end marijuana prohibition is very broad, composed of people who love marijuana, people who hate marijuana, and people who don't have strong feelings about marijuana use one way or the other. We all agree on one thing though - marijuana prohibition is doing more harm than good. It's wasting taxpayer dollars and police resources, filling our jails and prisons with hundreds of thousands of nonviolent people, and increasing crime and violence in the same way alcohol Prohibition did. Police made more than 750,000 arrests for marijuana possession in 2008 alone. Those arrested were separated from their loved ones, branded criminals, denied jobs, and in many cases prohibited from accessing student loans, public housing and other public assistance.
Fortunately, the tide is quickly turning against the war on marijuana. Legislators in California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Virginia are considering legislation to decriminalize or legalize marijuana. The Economist magazine noted that "marijuana could follow the path that alcohol took in the 1930s" out of prohibition into a regulated market. Celebrities are speaking out. The musician and activist Sting, for instance, recently urged people to oppose the entire war on drugs. In November Californians will vote on whether to legalize, tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol; the measure is ahead in the polls. Local California papers like the Orange County Register and the Long Beach Press-Telegram have editorialized in favor of the initiative, seven months before the vote. Nationally, support for making marijuana legal is about 44 percent, with support increasing about two percent a year. A recent Gallup poll predicts a majority of Americans will favor marijuana legalization within just four years if current trends hold.
The war on marijuana won't end, however, if everyone who supports reform stays silent. Maybe you smoke marijuana and are tired of being considered a criminal. Maybe you work in law enforcement and are tired of ruining people's lives by arresting them. Maybe you're a teacher or public health advocate tired of politicians cutting money for education and health to pay for the construction of new jails and prisons Maybe you're a civil rights activist appalled by racial disparities in marijuana law
enforcement. Or maybe you just don't want your tax dollars wasted on ineffective policies.
Regardless of your motivation, April 20th (4/20) is a good opportunity for you to make a pledge to end marijuana prohibition. The Drug Policy Alliance is asking people to use 4/20 as the time to commit to doing something in 2010 to end the war on people who use marijuana. There are many ways to help end marijuana prohibition. Donate to a drug policy reform organization. Tell your elected representatives to end marijuana prohibition. Talk to your friends and family about why people who use marijuana shouldn't be arrested. Twitter this oped. Change your Facebook status to announce your support for ending the war on marijuana. Stand up today with other Americans and get the word out there. This war will end; how soon depends, in part, on you.
According to Steven Hager, editor of High Times, the term 420 originated at San Rafael High School, in 1971, among a group of about a dozen pot-smoking wiseacres who called themselves the Waldos, who are now pushing 50. The term was shorthand for the time of day the group would meet, at the campus statue of Louis Pasteur, to smoke pot.
Intent on developing their own discreet language, they made 420 code for a time to get high, and its use spread among members of an entire generation. While our teens feel that they know something we don't, you can let them in on the fact that it was your generation that came up with the numbers. A quote from one of the Waldos in the High Times article states, "We did discover we could talk about getting high in front of our parents without them knowing by using the phrase 420."
After Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) told a town hall audience that they shouldn't believe everything they hear on Fox News, Bill O'Reilly had Coburn on his show to reprimand him for wrongly using Fox as a "whipping boy."
Coburn had said, specifically, that Fox tells viewers they may go to jail if they don't buy health insurance. O'Reilly claimed that "Nobody has ever said it." So Coburn backed off: "Maybe it wasn't fair," he said.
The thing is, Fox News hosts, anchors and guests have made the claims over and over.
Props to TPM's former video editor Ben Craw for putting together this reel over at Huffington Post:
The Quiet Man is turning up the volume once more - and this time, he wants to drown out the demon dealers of the Demon Weed. Ian Duncan Smith (remember him?) is back with a fat report into how to end poverty in Britain. The sections demanding the financial punishment of single mothers have already been pored over and torn up for their sociological illiteracy. But there is a yet-to-be-noticed section of the new Tory plans that would have an even more bracingly reactionary effect - and send your own odds of being a victim of crime sky-rocketing.
Let's look at skinning-up first. IDS believes that spliff-smoking is such a catastrophe that cannabis needs to be reclassified as a Class B drug and the police need to spend thousands of hours to tracking down the people who sell and smoke it (rather than, say, murderers and rapists). But he bases this view on blatant three factual errors.
IDS Error One: Cannabis today is much stronger than the cannabis of the 1960s. It is now a different drug to the one our hippy parents smoked. This is asserted casually these days, even by cuddly liberals who once supported cannabis legalisation. But in reality, the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction has published a major long-term study of cannabis potency - and found this is nonsense. "The effective strength of cannabis consumed in Britain has remained stable for the past 30 years," the report explains. There is variety between different kinds of cannabis - super-skunk is obviously more powerful - but the report found that "this variety always existed... there have always been some samples that have had a high potency."
IDS Error Two: cannabis 'causes' psychosis. A major study at the University of Cologne and King's College, London published this May showed a much more complex picture, with different chemical constituents of cannabis having different effects. The researchers found that although tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the ingredient that produces a high, giggly feeling, can trigger psychosis in a very small number of users, another chemical component to cannabis, cannabidinol (CBD), actually inhibits and supresses psychotic symptoms in people suffering from them. CBD is so good at supressing psychotic symptoms that it proved to be more effective than any of the major anti-psychotics currently prescribed by doctors.
Professor Jim van Os suggests a solution: legal cannabis could be easily grown and marketed with high CBD levels, ending the psychotic effect. Indeed, such a drug would actually be helpful for psychotics to smoke. Obviously, it's impossible to do this while cannabis remains in the hands of gangsters and organised crime syndicates - a certainty under prohibition. So it is actually more accurate to say cannabis prohibition causes cannabis psychosis - and legalisation would end it.
IDS Error Three: Relaxing the law makes more people use drugs. Between 1972 and 1978, eleven US states decriminalized marijuana possession. So did hundreds of thousands of people rush out to smoke the now-legal weed? The National Research Council found that it had no effect on the number of dope-smokers. None. The people who had always liked it carried on; the people who didn't felt no sudden urge to start.
But IDS' factual errors become even more startling when he turns to the needle. He has a simple solution to heroin addiction: he will end all the legal methadone and heroin prescriptions in Britain, and demand addicts stop altogether. They will be offered a Bible and a session of rehab - and after that, they're on their own.
This is part of a Tory critique of the current government's policy. Since 1997, Labour has - below the radar - radically revised Britain's drug treatment policies. They took a hard look at the evidence and admitted something inconvenient: even the best rehab centres in the world, the Betty Fords and the Priorys, have a success rate of just 20 percent. That means that for 80 percent of addicts, rehab, alas, doesn't work. If these addicts are offered no help or support beyond that one policy, as IDS demands, then we know what happens: they become burglars, or street prostitutes, or corpses. So the government increased methadone prescriptions by 87 percent. (They were more cowardly on heroin prescription, only running a few clinical trials).
And the result? As the former Deputy Drugs Tsar Mike Trace told me, "These prescriptions are the secret reason why crime has fallen so much under the current government." The Cheshire Drug Squad found in the 1980s that the presence of a rare heroin-prescribing clinic on their patch caused an incredible 94 percent drop in theft, burglary and property crimes. We are seeing a similar effect across Britain today - and IDS will reverse it.
Far from "giving up on addicts", giving them a regular prescription sets them free to have a normal life. Many go on to excel. Look at Dr William Stewart Halsted, the early twentieth-century captain of the Yale football team who became "the father of modern surgery" and the cofounder of the world-famous John Hopkins Hospital. Here is a typical description of his surgical technique: "He used frequently light, swift, sparing movements with the sharpest of knives, instead of free, heavy handed deep cutting... [There was] the minimum of hemorrhage." He did it all while injecting a minimum of 180 milligrams of morphine a day. He, of course, had access to a safe, legal supply, which he prescribed to himself. All the evidence shows it is scrambling for an illegal and contaminated supply that screws up opiate addicts - not the drug itself.
But IDS calls all this "methadone madness", serving up in its place a plate of cold turkey, with a cup of lukewarm moral piety to wash it down with. As Danny Kushlick, head of the drug reform charity Transform, explains: "The report's authors avoid the science and the evidence like the plague. It is the worst-written, most poorly informed report on drugs policy I have ever seen."
Will this now become Tory policy? One of the very few areas in which David Cameron is impressive is in his subtle, supple understanding of drugs policy. In 2002 he served on the Health Select Committee, interviewing dozens of experts on drugs policy, where he clearly understood the issues. He ended by co-authoring a brave report which said legalisation should be considered as an option - so we can finally take drugs back from armed criminal gangs and hand them to doctors and pharmacists.
As he picks up IDS' ramblings, Cameron faces a dillemma. Will he go with his own intellectual convictions, which tell him drug prohibition has been "disastrous", or will he appease his panicked party yet further by adopting this infantile prohibitionist cry? David, it's time to turn the volume down on the Quiet Man - to zero.
(April 2007)
You can read more articles Johann Hari has written about drug legalisation here.
If you support drug legalisation, the best British organisation to join is the excellent Transform whose website is here.
This from the man who avoided being expelled from Eton for his canabis use and also at one time liked raving in a field while off his tits (allegedly!)
Though J. Edgar Hoover’s minions often probed the interstate transportation of obscene material featuring Bettie Page, the notorious pin-up model was nonetheless willing to help agents when it came to FBI inquiries about the production of certain “flagellation and bondage pictures,” according to bureau records.
When a 1957 police drug raid on a Harlem apartment turned up a cache of obscene magazines and photos, paddles, a riding crop, a whip, and lengths of chain, rawhide, and rope, FBI agents contacted Page for some expert guidance. Specifically, they wanted to know if the apartment was a photo studio where obscene material was produced. According to the below memo sent to Hoover, Page told investigators that she “had never heard of that type of photography being made in Harlem.” An agent reported that Page also advised that the “flagellation and bondage pictures that she had posed for” were shot “in photographic studios or photographers apartments.”
The seized porn, which included “two books and four pictures depicting Betty Page in various poses,” was shipped to Washington for “examination” by the FBI Laboratory, according to a second memo. At some point, agents planned to quiz the apartment’s inhabitants about “what the source of these items was, and to what use they were putting them to.”
It's finally over for Simon Singh - the BCA is no longer pursuing him for defamation. It's good and bad, though, since the stupidest law in the world remains unchallenged, and anyone so inclined can use the british libel law to silence any critics, right or wrong...
They dropped the case, and it’s over.
Well, kinda. Actually, there are a lot of unresolved things here. One is that Simon is out over £100,000 of his own money. Had this gone to court and he won, the BCA would have had to pay his expenses.
That’s a pretty strong incentive on their part to have dropped the case, not-so-incidentally. I’ll note that fellow skeptic Ben Goldacre says Simon may go after the BCA for costs, something I would dearly love to see.
Second, the libel laws in the UK are still truly awful. I hope that the libel reform groups there keep the pressure on the government to look over those laws and drag them from the 17th into the 21st century. Don’t forget to show your support (even if you’re not from the UK)!
And third, I wonder how this will affect the BCA. Will they be more careful? Will they review their practices, going over them carefully to see which ones are backed by scientific reviews and testing, and which ones may be nothing more than thinly-veiled nonsense that not only do not help but can in fact harm or even kill patients?
Just stumbled on fact that Anwar Al Awlaki, Yemeni-American terrorist cleric, was arrested for soliciting prostitutes in San Diego in 90shalf a minute ago via Echofon
TIME Magazine recently highlighted “The Perils of Plastic.” Here’s what they have to say about Bisphenol A (BPA), the type of plastic used to bottle water:
What It Is: A chemical used in plastic production Found In: Water bottles, baby bottles, plastic wraps, food packaging Health Hazards: The government’s National Toxicology Program has concluded that there is some concern about brain and behavioral effects on fetuses and young children at current exposure levels What You Should Know: Switch to glass products when possible
Sometime in the next 24 hours 'Exile' is about to get it's 250,000th visitor.
What can I say?
I started this blog on the last day of September 2008 after losing my job and I never in my wildest dreams thought that it would ever have got this far.
So to everyone of you that visits all I can say is "thanx"
Once again, science proves what would appear obvious: people who have rich lives are more interesting and are more liked than people who are centered around their collecting habits (sadly, I seem to be part of that group, which would mean I am headed straight for depression unless I start getting out some more soon).
Van Boven has spent a decade studying the social costs and benefits of pursuing happiness through the acquisition of life experiences such as traveling and going to concerts versus the purchase of material possessions like fancy cars and jewelry.
"We have found that material possessions don't provide as much enduring happiness as the pursuit of life experiences," Van Boven said.
The "take home" message in his most recent study, which appears in this month's edition of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, is that not only will investing in material possessions make us less happy than investing in life experiences, but that it often makes us less popular among our peers as well.
Here (and I speak as a very lapsed catholic) is a major problem. The pope and the hierarchy do not see raping a kid as a crime they see it as a sin for which you can atone...)
'One night, I saw her again, and all my pent-up feelings were let loose' ... Andrew WK in 2001. Photograph: guardian.co.uk
After my high school crush had taken out a juvenile restraining order on me (read the story about how that happened here), I followed the restrictions of my punishment and didn't try to call or see her. I released my frustrations and pent-up urges in less romantic ways and got into vandalism and shoplifting. That ended up escalating into mail fraud and landed me in trouble with the police again. I had impersonated a local Michigan law-firm and wrote a fake letter on behalf of the underground cartoonist, Robert Crumb, posing as his lawyer. This all blew up in my face but I managed to get out of it because I was only 18 years old. To cut a long story short, I decided it was time to get out of the area for a clean break. I moved to New York City and soon signed up to do Andrew WK. I wrote this song, called I Want To Kill, shortly after arriving in the city. Andrew WK - I Want To Kill Link to this audio
Despite moving to a new area, I still couldn't stop thinking about the girl behind the song My Destiny. Part of me was just scared of getting in trouble again, but my infatuation was still very much alive; I had just pushed it deep inside me, and it was a matter of not letting it out. I got pretty good at controlling it, mainly by occupying myself entirely with Andrew WK. But one night, I saw her again, and all my pent-up feelings were let loose. Here's how it happened…
After we launched Andrew WK, my career immediately took off – it was an overnight sensation. I was on TV, on the radio, in magazines and newspapers, and touring around the world playing concerts. It was getting to the point where a lot of people I grew up with were seeing me around and shocked that "the troubled kid" from school was now some sort of "rock star". I was pretty low-key about any of the celebrity or fame I was receiving, but I couldn't deny the excitement of all the attention. On our first big US tour, we played every major city. When we played in Cleveland, Ohio, I heard a rumor that the girl was coming to the show. Of course, my heart skipped a beat and a lump formed in my throat. I was terrified but also thrilled. I refused to believe she was actually going to show up, but I was aware that she had moved to Cleveland to go to art school, so it was possible. I just couldn't believe that she would want to see me after all I had put her through. I figured she hated my guts and would never want to see me again, so I put her out of my mind.
We played our concert and had a great show. After, I was signing autographs for the audience in the parking lot behind the venue, when all of a sudden, there she was. It was probably the most scared I have ever felt in my life. I don't know how to explain the feeling. It was a mixture of total terror and absolute happiness. She made me almost sick with lust. I tried to avoid looking at her as best I could – but it was extremely hard to resist. The whole experience was overwhelming, and I excused myself from the rest of the fans and basically ran to my tour bus. After all, I still had the restraining order hanging over me (I wasn't quite 21 yet, which is when it ended).
After trying to catch my breath and slow my racing heart, I heard a knock on the door. It was her! I couldn't believe this was happening. What do I do!? I had a choice – I could either ignore her knocking (like she had ignored my knocking all those years earlier) and just let this miracle moment pass, or I could muster up my courage and answer the door. Maybe now, because I was doing well with Andrew WK and having success, she would give me the time of day! I gave myself a big mental pep-talk and answered the door.
"Hello," I said. I could barely talk – my mouth was so dry, and I was shaking with such force that the words were choppy. "Hello, Andrew," she said.
I invited her onto the bus and into the private back lounge, where it could be just her and me. I felt dizzy. My eyes were blurry and my ears were kind of ringing. My heart was beating so hard that I felt like I was having a heart attack. Still, I kept telling myself, "You can do this. You have to do this. This is what you wanted. This is your dream come true." We made our way into the back of the tour bus and I closed the door behind us. I was shaking, sweating, and felt like I was about to puke. I'm sure she could tell, but she didn't say anything. Instead, she sat down next to me on the bench seat and looked into my eyes.
"It's great to see you after all these years," she said. "I want to apologise for getting you in so much trouble back in high school. I think that song you wrote is really sweet, but back when I was younger, I was too freaked out to handle it or appreciate it."
I couldn't believe what she was saying! Here she was apologising to me! "No!" I said. "It's me that wants to apologise to you! I am so embarrassed about that song and that I was so obsessed with you. I'm really sorry for being so stupid back then."
"It's OK," she said. "We were both really young. Plus, you've obviously grown up a lot. You're doing really well now with your music and I think it's really cool."
What happened next was probably the most shocking, terrifying and awful experience I've ever had with a girl. All of sudden, just when I felt like everything was going great, I felt my nervousness intensify to a sickening degree. The room started spinning and my heart started beating harder than ever. I really felt like I was going to die – I couldn't catch my breath. The last thing I remember is that my head started to throb and my stomach started to hurt really bad – I couldn't see or hear anything. I blacked out.
I woke up in a hotel bedroom with my tour manager and some of my band standing around. What the hell had happened? Why aren't I on the bus? Was it all a dream? Where is she?
Turns out, I had experienced a severe anxiety attack and my body had shut down. If that wasn't bad enough, when I lost consciousness I also accidentally went to the bathroom in my pants. All of this happened right in front of her and, of course, she freaked out like crazy. She ran out of the bus and got security from the venue to call an ambulance. She thought I had died and was really scared. The medics determined I was fine, just a little stressed out, and took me to our hotel and gave me some fluids to rehydrate me after all the diarrhoea. I don't remember anything except blackness and then waking up in the hotel.
I never got the girl's phone number or had any way to follow up with her. I asked the venue security if they had seen her and they told me she left in a hurry. That was the last time I saw her and have never seen her again since.
I've obviously not told this story to many people except my closest friends. Publishing this is a part of the emotional therapy program I've been doing. Letting out these painful and humiliating experiences is supposed to be healing, so I'm going with it. Looking back now, I feel like maybe me passing out at that perfect moment was the universe's way of punishing me for what I did to the girl with My Destiny in high school. It was the ultimate golden opportunity and my body couldn't take advantage of it. I guess karma really is a bitch.
