Posted on

Gay Haters Or Just Idiots?

A lot of people are furious over a bit from the last Republican presidential debate, in which an openly gay soldier was booed for asking if the candidates would, if elected, reverse the progress made on gays in the military.

Some people around the Internet have called the booing of a gay man “indefensible,” “disgusting” and “evil.”

There’s also a lot of anti-Texas commentary making the rounds, and a lot of comments about Republicans being gay-fearing racists.

People love to over-complicate things.

Since this blog is largely about exploring the dark side of the human condition and searching for the redeemable among us, I’m going to take a crack at assessing this:

First, I don’t think the truth of the matter is that Republicans as a party are gay haters. I don’t believe Texans as a whole are, either.

Individuals are gay haters and racists.

I’ve met Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians who have shown their intolerance. And I’ve seen and heard more venom drip from peoples’ mouths in the “liberal” state of Massachusetts than I have anywhere else. I live here, which explains why I hear more of it here than anywhere else. If I spent more than a few days in one of the southern states maybe I’d come away with a different point of view.

I’ve met very progressive (some would even say liberal) Republican southerners who would die to defend the rights of everyone, gay or otherwise.

We love to paint these things with one fat brush. I’m guilty of it, too.

The reality is that a couple assholes booed this guy. Of them, I think the boos were more toward the question than the sexual orientation of the guy asking it.

Personally, when anyone has the balls to ask a question for an event like that, I think they deserve respect. The booing people in the audience were straight-up jerks. But the action doesn’t necessarily make them gay bashers.

Angry? Sure. Ill-behaved? That’s fair. Haters? I tend to doubt it.

http://youtu.be/vgBIeozJU2g

Posted on

One Slip Of The Tongue Can Ruin Your Whole Day

I long ago lost count of how many times I’ve gotten in trouble for letting bad words spill from my mouth in a split second of carelessness. I’m from Revere. It happens.

When you run off at the mouth, people can be quick to judge you and label you for life. But those who judge forget how easily verbal gaffes happen. I saw a video clip on Youtube yesterday that reminded me of this. It’s from three years ago. Susan “Sue” Simmons, the lead female news anchor at WNBC in New York City, is heard dropping the F-bomb live on the air, and she’s forced to apologize after the commercial break:

I’ll admit that I laughed hard and replayed it many times over. In my defense, I was sitting in the airport bored and tired.

It’s hard for me not to sympathize with Simmons. Sure, it was unprofessional and offensive. But it was human and we’ve all done something like it. The difference is that she’s got a microphone clipped to her collar.

It only takes a split second to embarrass yourself.

Something to remember next time we feel like ridiculing someone for doing the same thing.

http://youtu.be/T28PTWGmdYw

Posted on

Let’s Stop Calling It Ground Zero

I’ve written a lot about 9-11 in this blog. How could I avoid it? Nothing has fueled the fear, anxiety and depression of a nation like that terrible day. Whenever I’m here, I visit Ground Zero.

Part of it is a need to pay my respects to all who died there. Some of it is an obsessive-compulsive impulse. A lot of it is that whenever I see the construction workers hauling ass down there, it inspires me.

Mood music:

I’m here for my company’s annual Security Standard event in Brooklyn. Before setting my sights on the work at hand, I dumped my luggage and sprinted over the Brooklyn Bridge to Lower Manhattan.

Last year at this time, you couldn’t really see the scene taking shape at the WTC site from the bridge. Now you can. Walking over the bridge and looking to the left, there it is, rising up like a middle finger in the Manhattan sky:

One World Trade Center is taking shape. They’ve made major progress on it since I was here last September.

We’ve all been calling this Ground Zero since 9-11, but I don’t think it’s appropriate any longer. Too much life has returned to this place to keep calling it that.

I find the site extremely symbolic of the human condition at the heart of this blog.

We go through parts of our lives walking tall and feeling indestructible, just like we once thought the Twin Towers were impervious to life’s cruel twists of fate. Then something unexpected happens and we end up in ruins.

Then we have a choice to rise from the ashes and start over, or just go away.

I’d like to think I rose from the ashes of my earlier years. Crohn’s Disease and mental illness have taken their best shots at me and I’ve been reduced to rubble more than once. But I got up and I’m still standing.

I’m no special case. We all take our blows and most of us get back up.

Terrorists took their best shot and knocked those buildings to the ground, snuffing out thousands of precious souls in the process. But this city got back up and started over. Now new buildings are rising up, hopefully stronger than what was there before.

It’s like that Metallica song. We rise, we fall, we’re down and we rise again.

Perhaps I have a hyperbolic brain. But when I visit this place, that’s how it makes me feel.

Posted on

Screw Obama’s Jobs Speech, and Screw The GOP

Bad news, kids: That speech Obama is giving tonight will almost surely suck, just like last night’s debate of the Republican presidential candidates sucked. But it’s not all bad.

Mood music:

It’s funny how I used to get sucked in with every election as if life would suddenly change for the better when my candidates won. Looking back, it almost makes me feel stupid.

When Obama was elected in 2008, there was a feeling in the air that this guy would change everything. I’m not talking about the legislation he would push through Congress. I’m talking about a change in the public discourse.

I thought we finally had a guy who was going to tell us what we needed to hear instead of what we wanted to hear. I thought he would put aside bullshit party politics and talk above the partisan divide, directly to you and me.

And the Republicans? I already knew they were damaged goods. Their politics always seem mean-spirited, appealing to our fear and anger. The solution to everything is a massive tax cut that never seems to help the people who need it most.

If I were one of Obama’s speech writers, I would urge him to say something like this tonight:

“My fellow Americans, the system is broken, and I admit to being part of the problem. I came into office promising a change in the national dialogue and instead resorted to the usual partisan politics.

“I thought the best way to move the country forward was to get a bunch of legislation passed. I did, but nothing got better.

“I should have told you from the beginning that the only way forward is for each and every one of us to make bold sacrifices. Instead, I offered you more candy.

“When the nation became paralyzed by the debt ceiling fight I should have pushed with every fiber of my being for a plan that would truly work — not a deal that would do nothing but push the debt crisis off the front pages until a later date.

“Now, as Yoda would say, ‘matters are worse.’

“Tonight I start over. It’s time to do what’s right, not what will get me re-elected. I’m going to start telling you what you need to hear.

“If I’m a one-term president, so be it. Besides, what good is winning a second term is I can’t do what’s right in this term?

“The Republicans — crippled by their confused efforts to appease the tea party — won’t do anything bold because their only answer to anything is to cut spending and taxes. It sounds terrific but ignores some simple truths.

“One is that all of us are responsible for this crushing debt because we always demand the easier, softer way from our government. Let’s fight and win a war on terror, but let the enlisted men take care of it while we get some extra spending cash to blow at the mall.

“Let’s go trillions of dollars into debt fighting two wars because telling Americans we have to pay for these wars as we go would be political suicide. Let’s tell them what they want to hear and not ask them to make even a quarter of the sacrifices the Greatest Generation made in the Great Depression and WW II.

“The Republicans always talk about spending cuts and living within our means but it’s always a lie. Just look at the spending orgy we saw last decade at the hands of a Republican White House and Congress.

“The Democrats always talk about fighting for the little guy and helping the neediest in our society but that’s a lie to. Just ask the honest, hard-working people who have been mired in government red tape during their greatest hours of need. Just ask the hard-working people who see so much of their pay go into Social Security and Medicare, only to discover later that once they’re old and sick the government isn’t going to give them anywhere near the services they paid for during a lifetime of sweat and tears.

“It’s time for some honesty. You want us to get rid of the debt? You helped create it, now you have to help pay it down. No tax breaks for anyone until we do what we must. And if you are among the wealthiest, you have a patriotic duty to pay your fair share.

“Like JFK once said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’

“Tonight I challenge the Republicans to do something astounding — put politics aside and work with Democrats to do the hard work in the next year, election be damned. I make the same challenge to my own party.

“Let’s put our jobs on the line and show our countrymen the kind of courage we want them to aspire to.”

“Thanks for listening.”

He won’t say that, of course. He’ll take the safe road like he always does and offer a plan that has no hope of making things better. He’ll pander to Republicans that need their asses kicked instead.

But I’m ok with all that, because in my own struggles against evil I’ve realized an important truth: My life can only be better if I decide to be the change.

Government never could have helped me get control of mental illness and addictions. Government can’t help my family stay financially sound. Only we can pull it off.

We make mistakes along the way. But the strong survive because they don’t let the mistakes destroy them.

That’s always going to be the case, no matter which party controls the government.

So screw Obama’s speech and screw all those Republican candidates. Shut the TV and go to bed. Then get up tomorrow morning and make the best of what you can control.

Posted on

41 Years

Some people get depressed on their birthday. Not me. The fact that I turn 41 today is a freak of nature. But a year into my forties, I know I have more cleaning up to do.

Mood music:

Item: When I was sick with the Crohn’s Disease as a kid, I lost a lot of blood and developed several side ailments. I’m told by my parents that the doctor’s were going to remove the colon more than once. It didn’t happen. They tell me I was closing in on death more than once. I doubt it was ever that serious. Either way, here I am.

Item: When the OCD was burning out of control, I often felt I’d die young. I was never suicidal, but I had a fatalistic view of things. I just assumed I wasn’t long for this world and I didn’t care. I certainly did a lot to slowly help the dying process along. That’s what addicts do. We feed the addiction compulsively knowing full well what the consequences will be.

When I was a prisoner to fear and anxiety, I really didn’t want to live long. I isolated myself. Fortunately, I never had the guts to do anything about it. And like I said, suicide was never an option.

I spent much of my 30s on the couch with a shattered back, and escaped with the TV. I was breathing, but I was also as good as dead some of the time.

I’ve watched others go before me at a young age. Michael. Sean. Even Peter. Lose the young people in your life often enough and you’ll start assuming you’re next.

When you live for yourself and don’t put faith in God, you’re not really living. When it’s all about you, there no room to let all the other life in. So the soul shrivels and hardens. I’ve been there.

I also had a strange fear of current events and was convinced at one point that the world would burn in a nuclear holocaust before I hit 30. That hasn’t happened yet.

So here I am at 41, and it’s almost comical that I’m still here.

I’m more grateful than you could imagine for the turn of events my life has taken in the last six years.

I’ve learned to stop over-thinking and manage the OCD. When you learn to stop over-thinking, a lot of things that used to be daunting become a lot easier. You also find yourself in a lot of precious moments that were always there. But you didn’t notice them because you were sick with worry.

I notice them now, and I am Blessed far beyond what I probably deserve.

I have a career that I love.

I have the best wife on Earth and two boys that teach me something new every day.

I have many, many friends who have helped me along in more ways than they’ll ever know.

I have my 12-Step program and I’m not giving in to the worst of my addictions.

Most importantly, I have God in my life. When you put your faith in Him, there’s a lot less to be afraid of. Aging is one of the first things you stop worrying about.

So here I am at 41. feeling a lot better about myself than I did at 31. In fact, 31 was one of the low points.

But I’d be in denial if I told you everything was perfect beyond perfect. I wouldn’t tell you that anyway, because I’ve always thought that perfection was a bullshit concept. That makes it all the more ironic and comical that OCD would be the life-long thorn in my side.

I just recently quit smoking, and I’m still missing the hell out of that vice. I haven’t gone on a food binge in nearly three years, but there are still days where I’m not sure I’ve made the best choices; those days where my skin feels just a little too loose and flabby.

I still go to my meetings, but there are many days where I’d rather do anything but go to a meeting. I go because I have to, but I don’t always want to.

And while I have God in my life, I still manage to be an asshole to Him a lot of the time.

At 41, I’m still very much the work in progress. The scars are merely the scaffolding and newly inserted steel beams propping me up.

I don’t know what comes next, but I have much less fear about the unknown.

And so I think WILL have a happy birthday.

OCD Diaries

Posted on

How Many Times Should a Man Say He’s Sorry? (Inspired By Kevin Mitnick)

Yesterday I wrote a post over at my information security blog about famed hacker Kevin Mitnick and how he is conducting himself in the limelight. Is he redeeming himself after a life of crime?

That’s the point a lot of people seem to be debating. Should a man or woman who has made mistakes in life apologize in every interview, at every conference, behind every closed door?

I’m reminded of that scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” where Indiana Jones tells Marion Ravenwood that he can only say he’s sorry so many times. “Well say it again anyway!” she says as she slams down a tray full of shot glasses. In the same scene, she notes that everyone’s sorry for something.

We are. I’m sorry I wasted so many years hiding in my room because of fear and anxiety. I’m sorry I nearly destroyed what was left of my health with countless binges. I’m sorry I wasn’t there more when my best friend was headed toward suicide. I’m sorry I can’t get along with my mother.

We’re all sorry for something.

But when do you reach the point where you need to make your amends and get on with life? I have my half-baked theories.

In Mitnick’s case, he did his crimes and served his time. He has used his hacking skills for good in recent years. I know many people in the security community who consider him a friend.

I don’t think he needs to say he’s sorry anymore. Using his skills for the greater good is good enough to me. And as for his conduct in promoting his book, “Ghost in the Wires,” I don’t mind. If you write something, your goal is to have as many people read it as possible. I can be shameless in proliferating this blog, but I don’t apologize. I don’t write it so it’ll sit there on the Internet being read by five people a year. You can’t be useful to people if they don’t know you’re there.

Writing this thing is partly my way of paying it forward. It’s a lot more useful than repeatedly telling everyone I’m sorry for the way I used to be. After awhile, the apologies ring hollow unless they’re backed by real change.

When you change, apologies become less necessary.

If you have to keep apologizing, then you probably still have some behaviors to change.

That’s what I’ve learned about myself, at least.

OCD Diaries

Posted on

Everyone Has Opinions. Everyone Has Research. Does Anyone Have THE Answer?

Readers have been sending me all kinds of articles lately about where addiction and mental illness come from and how best to recover. It’s useful and appreciated. But there’s a missing piece. A big missing piece.

Mood music:

Here’s the thing about addicts: We know all the things you’re supposed to do to get well. We know full well what is good for us and what is bad.

And when the itch takes over our brain, all that stuff doesn’t matter. We want the thing that’ll make us comfortable. In that mode, we avoid all the good stuff at all costs.

Yoga is fantastic for you and helps you learn to live in the moment. But when my head is in that other zone, there’s just no way I’m going to try it. A big fat cigar is what I REALLY want. (I just quit tobacco, which is why I’m prickly as I write this).

Fruit and veggies are terrific for you. But when the binge eater wants to binge, only the bad stuff will do. Forty dollars of McDonalds. That’s what I go for.

These are the things people just don’t understand when they try to help people like us with advice. When the addictive impulse strikes, the overriding craving is for something that’s very bad for us. Sure, gluten is bad for you. But if my binge-eating compulsion were active and I had gluten intolerance, I’d swallow all of it anyway.

Because I want that momentary feeling of rapture more than anything, regardless of the pain I know will come minutes and hours later.

That, my friends, is what escapes you when you’re trying to help me.

Now, let’s stop here for a reality check: I AM NOT going on a binge right now. I’ve been clean of that for more than two years now. Fundamentally, I am doing well. I’m going to my 12-Step meetings. I’m writing. True, I am edgy right now because I quit smoking cold turkey Friday night. But that will pass. I’m holding steady on that front, despite the constant twitching.

But I am feeling vulnerable. My disease is doing push ups in the parking lot and it’s just dying to kick my ass.

I’ve written much about how my addictive behavior is a byproduct of mental illness (OCD). But addiction itself IS the mental illness. My friend Alan Shimel sent me an article from the AP that states the case pretty well:

Addiction isn’t just about willpower. It’s a chronic brain disease, says a new definition aimed at helping families and their doctors better understand the challenges of treating it.

“Addiction is about a lot more than people behaving badly,” says Dr. Michael M. Miller of the American Society for Addiction Medicine.

That’s true whether it involves drugs and alcohol or gambling and compulsive eating, the doctors group said Monday. And like other chronic conditions such as heart disease or diabetes, treating addiction and preventing relapse is a long-term endeavor, the specialists concluded.

Addiction generally is described by its behavioral symptoms — the highs, the cravings, and the things people will do to achieve one and avoid the other. The new definition doesn’t disagree with the standard guide for diagnosis based on those symptoms.

But two decades of neuroscience have uncovered how addiction hijacks different parts of the brain, to explain what prompts those behaviors and why they can be so hard to overcome. The society’s policy statement, published on its website, isn’t a new direction as much as part of an effort to translate those findings to primary care doctors and the general public.

“The behavioral problem is a result of brain dysfunction,” agrees Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

That’s some very enlightening stuff, and it will be helpful to people going forward. But THE answer to the problem will remain elusive.

I get a lot of dietary advice lately. People read about how I don’t eat flour or sugar as part of my recovery from binge eating. And that leads to questions like this: “Have you tried a gluten-free diet?”

It’s a fair question, and the person who asked about it just wants me to be well. I suppose a diet devoid of flour and sugar is gluten free. Mostly gluten free, anyway.

But in the end, the gluten itself was not my problem. The problem was my overwhelming instinct to eat all the gluten.

The problem is about control. I have none. The sensor in the brain that tells people when they’ve had enough doesn’t work in my head. It broke long ago. So I need a set of coping tools and the 12 Steps to keep my head in the game.

That’s not THE answer, either. But it helps a lot.

Thanks for sending me the articles, friends. I might balk at some of the information, but I appreciate the spirit in which it’s delivered.

OCD Diaries

Posted on

Rethinking Jani Lane Upon His Death

Former Warrant singer Jani Lane was found dead last night in a Comfort Inn in L.A. at age 47. It’s unclear at this point what the cause is, but his death is making me re-think a few things about my attitude.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/cSdvxocgbAg

I remember when Warrant came out in the late 1980s. I couldn’t stand them. Sure, they sounded good. Crunchy guitar sound. Good vocals. But it all sounded so fake. I thought “Cherry Pie” was the dumbest song I’d ever heard. Again, the sound was good. But the lyrics were stupid and the feel wasn’t real to me. Admittedly, though, I liked “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and hated the fact that I liked it.

The band also came out at a point in the late 80s when every band was starting to sound and look alike. I decided I was too cool for it all.

I did what a lot of other metal heads did in the early 90s when the metal scene imploded under the weight of all the copycats: I started listening to so-called grunge: Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains. My own band, Skeptic Slang, sounded a lot like the grunge we were listening to, with hints of old-school metal here and there.

I still listen to all those bands, but in recent years I’ve returned to my 80s hard rock roots. Warrant has not been part of my playlist.

I’ve seen interviews with Jani Lane over the years where he lamented writing “Cherry Pie” and took a crack at reality TV. He looked and sounded like a troubled man in those clips, and he did indeed wrestle some demons. He was recently sentenced to serve 120 days in jail after pleading no contest to a 2010 DUI charge — his second in two years.

As for his death, no one really knows what happened. We can speculate, but I won’t. I’ll just wait for the follow-up news reports.

Instead, I’m examining my own reaction to his death and what it says about me and human nature in general.

When I first saw the news an hour ago, I felt bad. I went on Youtube and started playing Warrant songs. I was thinking that they sounded much better with age, then I had a “what the fuck?” moment.

Here I am, thinking these songs sound pretty good. And I’m sneering at all the nasty comments people make about being glad he’s dead. Then I catch myself, because in my self-righteous anger I quickly remember that I used to say things about how bands like this sucked and needed to be destroyed. I’m pretty sure I’ve joked from time to time about how it would be nice for bands like this to go down in a flaming plane wreck.

That’s not nice. It’s certainly not a good fit with my Christian beliefs. But there it is.

It’s funny how we get when musicians and celebrities we don’t think much of die. I found it amusing that people were tearing Michael Jackson down in the last decade of his life because of his alleged pedophilia, yet, when he died, everyone magically forgot that stuff and acted as if Jesus Himself had been crucified again.

When Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx opined about Jackson being a “child rapist” and I wrote about it, the comments section of this blog descended into all kinds of name calling. Most of it came from people who love Michael Jackson’s music.

More then one person noted that Jackson was never found guilty of such things. When he was still alive, people were not defending him so ardently.

We do this stuff a lot when famous, tarnished figures die. We play up the good stuff they did and conveniently forget the bad stuff. Or, at least, we minimize the latter as some unfortunate little interlude between the acts of greatness. Richard Nixon comes to mind.

And now we’re remembering the good stuff Jani Lane contributed to the world in his 47 years.

You know what? That’s how it should be.

Everyone deserves a shot at redemption, and making music I personally didn’t care for doesn’t mean there was something wrong with Jani Lane. He wrote the music he wanted to write. It spoke to him, and it spoke to others, even if I wasn’t one of them.

The band’s success in the late 80s and early 90s happened because the music made a lot of kids happy, just as Motley Crue’s “Shout At The Devil” and Def Leppard’s “Pyromania” gave me moments of happiness during a troubled youth.

We all have our tastes and opinions. We all tend to think our opinions are better than everyone else’s.

That’s part of the human condition. We don’t just do it to celebrities. We do it to everyone. We are judgmental savages sometimes.

Rest in Peace, Jani Lane. I apologize for any of the bad stuff I said about you over the years.

OCD Diaries

Posted on

A Personality Defect We All Share

When you hear about people with conflicting personalities, the image of an insane asylum patient comes to mind. If that were indeed the accurate picture, we would all be committed.

Mood music:

The truth is that we all have more than one personality. We can be one person in one group setting, then go to another group setting and become somebody else.

I don’t think that’s such a bad thing, either.

This all came up a couple weeks ago as I had coffee with my friend Audrey Clark, a Marblehead, Mass. native and singer-guitarist for The 360s. We were talking about how we can be at ease and talkative in a one-on-one setting or in a small group, then go off to another group setting — in this case, a crowded rock club where the lighting is dim or nonexistent and people don’t look like they do on Facebook.

For me the multiple personalities are something I treasure.

I consider my multiple personalities a strength, with a bunch of recovery tools rolled up into one happy mess.

On one side of my brain is the metal head. The guy who used to sing in a band and who to this day listens to all the hard-edged music he grew up on.

There’s the history nerd who has his work stations at work and home festooned with busts of historic figures, old news clippings and framed copies of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg Address and a variety of nautical artifacts. The guy who put his family in the station wagon last year and drove to Washington D.C.for a private tour of the White House West Wing (a friend works there).

There’s the security scribe who writes about the world of hackers, security vendors and government cybersecurity officials for CSOonline and CSO Magazine. On this one I actually have multiple personalities within multiple personalities.

Many of my friends in the security industry are a colorful mix of characters. Some are the hacking types who dress like rock stars and share my musical tastes. Others wear a suit and tie every day and work for multi-billion-dollar corporations and government agencies, and they often share my love for history. I float easily between both camps.

Then there’s the Catholic.

Faith is connected to everything I do. I live for God — or try to — and in all my other pursuits that’s what drives me. I’m active in my church community, getting up and doing readings at Mass and helping out with programs like RCIA. My personality is much different from that of my fellow parishioners, but we get on well, bound by a love for our families, children and God.

Finally and most importantly — I actually consider this central to my Faith journey — there’s the family man, the one who adores his wife and children and tries hard to make decisions that put them before work. I don’t always pull it off, but in the end, they are THE MOST IMPORTANT forces in my life. Well, God is, but my Faith does compel me to put family first. It’s complicated, I know, but I’m sure most of you understand.

All these things make for a challenging life. But I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Ever since I lifted the chains of depression, OCD, fear-anxiety and addiction off of me, I’ve loved all the jagged pieces of my life all the more.

So if you have multiple personalities, don’t hide them. Don’t run from them. Embrace them.

As long as those personalities aren’t dominated by the darker forces of human nature.