You can't shock me at the age of 66 but you can surprise me on occasion...

I have an employee in her mid-50's: she used to work for a very fine law firm for thirty years until her managing partner retired and she did the same for a couple years and came out of retirement and works for me as a receptionist/scheduler. She is fantastic at her job, very thorough, attentive to detail, friendly to patients of all stripes, engaging, a little profane but in a funny way, not in that hold-your-head manner. She comes to work early and leaves late, files everything before she walks out the door, answers the phones on the first ring and has perfect telephone mastery which is very hard to find these days.

But she is not just a Trump supporter: she believes that there is a planet identical to Earth on the other side of the Sun, (yes I know this is nothing new) and the alien visitors are the ones making things happen here and are in control of everything from economics, politics, and the climate alterations using their advanced machines. She also believes that there is another Sun, though much smaller behind the planet Jupiter in direct alignment and we can never see it and it was placed there for some unimaginable reason having to do with our tides and other vagaries of the Earth. This is not a joke to her and her discovering more about all of this is a serious enterprise. She has other beliefs which I've forgotten but I do recall thinking to myself that they were extremely creative and I myself could never have invented them in a million years.

And she speaks of these things with the utmost authority, the way you'd explain how the sun rises and sets to a four year old or how a doorbell works when you push a button. It's staggering. If you met her in a checkout line you'd think, now THERE'S a normal, terrific lady who really has her head together. But just below the surface there is this certainty of bizarre concepts and strange thought style. You just never know. That's how Qanon and Nazification and Fascism and Totalitarianism can flourish rather easily. There are many willing subjects and they're disguised as normal people.

there would be two reports: the one for the general public....and the other one...with the really horrifying stuff that will never ever make it to the light of day. Think of the finale of the first Indian Jones film: the Ark of the Covenant being hidden in a giant warehouse for thousands of years in an innocuous wooden crate. The real material, the intercepts, photos, video, bank records, all of it, buried for time immemorial.

That's what I would write...

some Sunday morning reflections: I've been here nearly 16 years and many years ago I used to post clinical/behavioral cases that were IMO interesting as they came through my dental office. But I stopped doing that because other things were more important for discussion as the country has been dissolving into Civil War and a form of Anarchy over this time, so my sense of humor has been dulled a bit and there was no point in performing the exercise without humor.

But I was thinking about something today which may interest a few of you: in clinical practice we have the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, with respect to individuals and the Ugly can sometimes be Very Ugly. which phrase reminds me of someone with whom we are all obsessed to some fair degree. But I will tell you something: I have had some people who are horrifying human beings and tortured me and my staff for many years here, especially in my early days (As one matures, one learns how to eliminate these individuals quickly from one's practice without risking a lawsuit for patient abandonment or malpractice, or worse, being reported to the State Board) but you know what?

Eventually these bastards die (as we ALL shall) of disease or old age or accident. And you know what else? Even as a humanist and an altruist and a clinician who gives his all to his patients no matter what their politics, attitudes, prejudices, or evil nature, because that's the job, I smile grimly yet happily to myself when these horrible human beings depart this mortal coil. And so it shall be eventually.

I just want to be around for the event...

They’re gonna move it out of D.C. and aim the hose at the base of the fire. Put the locals on it in NY who know the territory and the players best.

As a healthcare practitioner I have to respect HIPAA regulations so you’re going to have to take my word, as a sixteen year DU member, that this came from a significant individual who is in a position to know:

Individual #1 has a problem - he took loans from the Russians WHO FORGAVE THE LOANS and #1 did not report it as income to the IRS.

Think Al Capone...thought this was “of note”.

Weirder than usual delivery!!!!

I'm driving into work this Saturday morning at 5:15 and it occurs to me that the reason, the REASON that Apocalyptic films and TV shows are so popular is that people want to envision a world wherein all their commitments are erased at a stroke: bills, bad jobs, bad relationships, bad politics, and the like. Yes, it is unlikely that they'd survive, but each of us to an extent has a heroic-fantasy aspect to our personalities, and perhaps we'd be among the few who'd survive. In the film "2012" you see the car careening through the city while hundreds of thousands perish horribly around it, and yet our only concern is for those in the automobile and whether they make it through. We see ourselves in the car and really only care about ourselves in that moment. At that instant, all the loans are cancelled, it no longer matters whether the boss is going to fire you, or whether your next door neighbor's dog barks incessantly every night at 2 AM. The paradigm shift is exhilarating...


And then I thought: suppose I were in desperate financial straights and went to the Mob to borrow money and worked out a deal to repay them in money and services rendered. Of course, you couldn't get me to say a bad thing about them and might actually become a champion of theirs because without their ongoing existence my life would be altered for the "much worse". In fact I might wind up identifying with the aggressor so to speak and become their advocate whenever possible. They would never have to remind me of the multitudinous ways that they could ruin me since it is a given and certainly part of the deal, as we know it must be. And so it is in the WH. It's just that simple.

Oh well, off to digging holes and filling them...just some thoughts on a quiet and very very cold Saturday morning before sunrise...

When the mothers give their daughters massive numbers of birth control pills for when they’re raped on their way North, the reason they have to do that is that cheap pills fall out even though the girls put them in. Sad. “

On edit: I made this up. But he might have said it...

Best in years.