The Beginning

Howdy to all out there. This is the first post by me, a self confessed well adjusted madman. I am looking to just riff and rant about the many things in life. I guess I should preface this all with my actual sense of wonder as if there is anybody out there who really cares what I have to say. I mean I would say my mother cares, but really I do not think that she does. It is not a bad thing. It just is.

That is going to be the ongoing thread throughout this....Things just are. All is good AND bad. I rarely inhabit the world of extremes. I live in this ambiguous jungle of ideas and life. The blacks and whites are easy, it is those damned shades of gray that cause most people trouble. I find no anxiety in the gray and ambiguous. Go figure!

I am writing from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. There has been a trial going on over here. A 17 year old and two of his friends are "alleged" to have killed the boy's 12 year old brother and attempted to kill the boy's step father. They have a tape made by one of the kids' girlfriend about an hour before the killing (71 hack wounds to the face and head before slicing his trachea and severing his carotid artery so that he choked to death on his own blood AFTER feeling the full pain of the hacking wounds--they bled so they would have had to have occurred before the "death blow" of the severing of the carotid). I wanted to give a little background to how grisly it was. Anyway, they all plead innocent to first degree murder charges, which is their wont and right. I mean the state must prove its case.

The non-related two have basically said that the brother (older) did it in an unexplained rage and that they had nothing to do with the actual killing. The brother, this is where I am going to rant, had a forensic psychiatrist diagnose him with some sort of "impulse control disorder". Now, this may be me being cynical but I have always loved psychiatry and psychology and I did go to law school, but it seems this "diagnosis" is purely descriptive. This psychiatrist has merely taken his "rage" issues and put some sort of psychiatric jargon to it. It says NOTHING and means NOTHING! It is one of those things that has NO value. Her "diagnosis" adds no value. I mean this kid had some anger issues and trouble, now there is the claim of an actual "disorder"?

When I grew up, which was not too long ago, it was called adolescence. The raging hormones and fact that nobody "understood". I mean my parents did not go through it before me. Nobody went through it. These feelings are all NEW to the world since I am first feeling them. I am being sarcastic, which does not necessarily come across in the written word as well as would if spoken. It is enough to make me scream. I think that I am starting to do that Lewis Black poking thing with my fingers as I type. That makes it really hard to type, I will say.

Ulitmately, the greatest sadness must rest with the mother. Her youngest son is dead as a result of her oldest son and he could be in prison for life, which he should be given the facts. She has to live with "losing" both of her children.

We could blame her for being a lousy parent but that would be unfair. The latest studies do show that parents have little effect on how their children turn out. The greatest influence is their peer group. Great that is just another thing I have to worry about with my son and how he will turn out. I control so damn little and so do you! Get used to it and go with the flow.