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I'm a political science major, done at the end of summer. At this point in my life I'm very goal oriented and school being my main occupation, try to take it seriously (currently a 4.0). I've had a lot of fun and have gotten into my share of trouble in the past, but now is about the future. It's important to feel like you're doing something of consequence in life. I'd like to get myself in a position to make an impact and try to leave the world a little better place than I came into it. A six figure job and a diplomatic passport would be nice too. Doable.
I'll go to great lengths for an interesting story. Hence the picture of my Halloween costume (I was a dickhead). No problem sacrificing dignity for a cheap laugh! Stories of years past are better.
For the next three weeks I'm in south Florida visiting the family (for better or worse). Looking to cut loose for the brief interlude in busting my ass.
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In regard to torture, the USSR really had it's ducks in a row. While I haven't studied Soviet torture techniques specifically, the ancillary knowledge from related topics leads me to the belief. Under the second Bush administration, the United States in some ways had it's ducks even more precisely aligned, but in others just had no idea. US torture techniques were the result of quasi scientific analyses utilized by lawyers and sadistic military personnel working in tandem. Some of the stuff used was sincerely on point. And true to the torture techniques of all liberal democracies, no scars! Yet the US ultimately had no idea what it was doing because a) in the western world you can't get a conviction when there's torture involved b) we used the wrong kind of torture.
Case in point is a favorite Soviet tactic: sleep deprivation. It may sound silly, but former Israeli Prime Minister Menachim Begin (I believe it was) who was subjected to it offered up his opinion that the desire for sleep far and away is greater than that for food or water. Quite simply: after three days, you will do anything. Great tactic for extracting false confessions, terrible for extracting military intelligence as we tried to do. Not only did one detainee confess to masterminding almost all recent terrorist attacks, but also confessed to the sun revolving around the earth.
This is the level I'm on. Gitmo detainees would be given roughly four hours in breaks per 24 for months. I have had 1hr of sleep 27 hours ago and in the past 72 hours have had 4 in bits and pieces. Once every couple of weeks I used to get a solid nine hours. But it's been getting progressively getting worse. Tonight was supposed to be my good sleep night. It's not happening. I want to sleep so badly, but just can't. It dawned on me the other day, that by the definition of most, I'm subjecting myself to torture. At the moment I simply go about is if I were drunk. But jf this were being enforced by someone else my mind would be profoundly fucked.
I've got a few theories on it. A major impediment has been the inability to calm my mind.The stress of trying to keep up a 4.0 while taking 5 upper level courses might be contributing. A few months back I had a terrifying premonition about getting a B in my Asian History course. Not shitting you about that. It really scared me. What's worse, I currently stand at an A-.
Another thought is that things are going too well. For a long time my life was mired in shit. But after much hard work I'm on the track to an interesting life involving more than pissing away hundreds of thousands of dollars of money I didn't earn (granted, that was A LOT of fun). So maybe some unconscious desire to keep myself down is rearing it's head.
There's also the possibility that it is cause by the lack of a blowoff valve. While my life is in many respects going very well, at base level it's not. It's been a long time since there's been someone who cared about me with the same white hot intensity with which I cared for her. So the joy in my life comes solely from the little things. But listening to Marvin Gaye with the sunroof open on a sunny day just isn't enough. Compounding this is my assessment of the whole problem as solely my fault. I see it as a failure in the keeping up with the joneses sense. At the very least I could be getting laid like everyone else in this college town... alas. For a while it's just been something I've just kind of dealt with. A creative type forcing himself into very uncreative circumstances, the rage has been festering. Hopefully this outlet will help.
If not, I've got an appointment in a couple of weeks to get some SERIOUS sleeping medication. I'd rather not have to take medication every night, but something has to give. 12 hours ago I stumbled to my car hoping I wouldn't die in a car accident on the way home. Another 48 hours without sleep is entirely reasonable to expect, and to be frank, I really don't know what happens at that point.
That aside, the most interesting form of torture applied by the CIA in my opinion: total sensory deprivation. Complete lack of auditory and visual stimuli along with an effort to limit those of touch and smell. 24 hours completely disorients a person detaching them from reality, 48 will drive them temporarily insane. A couple of weeks can make someone permanently insane. They coupled it with fostering dependence as well: total isolation aside from one person who they would see for thirty seconds a day, having to beg for meals which would come sporadically, isolation from outside light sources and altering the hours of the day. Ultimately the goal was to have a very twisted version of Stockholm syndrome. The impersonal nature of the setup probably made it impossible. A 200 year tradition of the American military spearheading humane treatment of prisoners down the drain for questionable tactical gain.
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An internet community is quite the phenomenon. Cliched as it may be, I feel compelled to throw it out there: 15 years ago who would have thought?
Having an aversion to anything "lame" I try to avoid the trap. For one reason or another, it's easy to find oneself enveloped. You originally make an account to get help fixing your mercedes. But all of the sudden you're bullshitting about Deloreans with people you've never met, and have wracked up 350 posts. God knows, a 26 year old Mercedes has a problem every other week, but it's not like that. They irony of it is that with that time I spent ripping on the guy who put a Toyota engine in his S Class... my S Class could have been completely refurbished! Needless to say, restraint is now the order of the day.
Every community has it's own culture and zeitgeist. The W126 forum on Benzworld.org is brimming with altruism and good cheer. The forum for my Grand Prix... not so much. And then there's the forum I had to create an account for to ask a question about my dog. Really Threecolors? 5,000 posts? About what? Those people were on the cutting edge of douche-ery.
And then there's Collarme. This has to be one of the most interesting things I've ever seen. Perusing profiles, there are people from all over the world bonding solely on... bondage. Mercedes' owners looooove to talk about their cars. Dog owners looooove to bore you with shit about their dogs. So it only follows that those people would band together via this series of tubes known as the internet. However, bdsm is generally a behind closed doors subject. Yet, here is this huge community of people brought together via their love of being kept in cages, smacking others across the face with their belt buckle and so forth. It takes a special kind of person to have this is as a major source of identity.
Thus, instead of reading a 50 study about the effects of the "naming and shaming" tactics employed by advocacy NGOs on the human rights policy of those governments against which the PR is levied, I find myself wasting time online once again. FYI: it works for domestic political rights but not for human rights abuses. This isn't because a bdsm lifestyle is a major source of my identity. Sadly, I've actually only had a couple of occasions wherein it was appropriate to exercise that tendency. Even more unfortunately, I've never had a woman return the favor (part of the reason for creating the account). Rather, it seems like an interesting place to write. A wasteland of people all of whom somewhere in the back of their minds have a modicum of sincerely fucked up shit going on. Well, it's my kind of place! There's nothing like a good dive bar, if you know what I mean. And as far as keeping a journal/diary is concerned, it seems like it will be getting just the right amount of traffic. One or two once in a blue moon. Just barely enough to make it worth writing. More importantly, this is well hidden. Facebook, myspace, livejournal... an adept government or military employer could easily dig that up. Collarme.com... if State Department has it's shit together enough to find me here, US hegemony may have a good 50 years left to go.
And it is with this that I inaugurate my new bloggish journalish diaryish type thing.
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| Age: 18 |
| Chard,
United Kingdom |
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