The Onion and Neurophysiology

Oliver Sacks and Stephen Jay Gould may have had differen views, styles of expression, and even areas of expertise, but The Onion certainly tells engaging tales, and is slightly more accessible because of its on-line presence.

Still The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat is a great read. I've not seen Awakenings, but besides having an excellent director, Penny Marshall, the cast includes Robert DeNiro, Robin Williams, Vin Diesel, Marge Simpson (Julie Kavner) and Josh Lyman (West Wing) were in it.

Area Man Calls For Immediate Release Of His Endorphins

When This Meth Thing Blows Over, You'll Come Crawling Back

Why so down in the dumps, vato? Man, you don't look so good. What happened, artillery-shell blow half your face off? What's that? You're...

One Big Profile In Courage or rather One Profile in BIG Courage

News Story - Inmate freed after conviction in 1988 Pizza Hut murder overturned In 1996 another man admitted committing the crime, DNA examination exonerated Mr. Ochoa , and in 2001, the Texans let him out of prison. In 2006 Christopher Ochoa graduated from law school. Best to not know what happened to Chris's buddy who also was wrongfully convicted at the time, and also later exonerated, but who has not decided to attend law school.

Responding quickly to the calls of justice, a newly elected Governor of Texas, G.W. Bush initiated an investigation/exoneration process as part of an his prison reform plan that established a special commission to revisit crimes and convictions where issues of equity had been raised. Governor Bush wished to rectify the rare occassions where poverty may have hindered a defendant’s ability to obtain adequate legal representation. Formerly involved in professional sports himself, George Bush understood that the side with the money to pay its players had a better chance of winning than a team that could not afford top quality professionals. An ardent advocate social justice, the Guv wanted the best legal teams available to any Texan who needed them - law enforcement teams, defendents, and convicts alike – in the quest for truth.
And if the best minds in Texas couldn’t do it, the Guv was not above asking folks even from blue states to help.
Project Innocence with the University of Wisconsin group helped free Mr. Ochoa.

Had the Guv had just a bit more foresight, his criminal justice reforms might have aided close buddies (Ken) and friends (Jeff, et.). Ken has a web site detailing the miscarriage of justice in his case. While I do not believe that DNA tests or costs were important factors in this case, I obviously am not an attorney.

Dear AAJ: What's in a name

I needed an email address, and while Askajunker was more a typo of last resort than apt pseudonym, turns out that some other sicko had already grabbed Askajunkie. After I thought more about it, I decided that at my age I'd be wiser to reveal ancestral membership in the Prussian nobility than to admit any sort of addiction. If I were ever to trade email addresses with a new friend, for instance, I figured it would be cooler to come from a family of German squires, than to admit they were a bevy of hippie pot heads. DDDefault would work just fine. Juliet's theory notwithstanding (act 2, scene 2), lot's is in a name apparently, and I bet all the fun monikers at free web based email sites are in use.

Once I accidentally impressed a few tech friends at with my hotmail id (ddefault@hotmail.com) that was made with just my name and no special characters (to distinguish me from all the other dee dee default's out there), instead of one like ddfault2003@hotmail.com that would reveal me uniquely, but as a DD come lately (or DD come 2003) to the internet. In one of my very few trendy moves, I apparently rode an early wave of web surfing in the nineties.

But damn, was I cool!

In Which AAJ plays "Expert Witness"

They'll Let Just Anybody On-Line These Days, and I still dream of being Bobby Goren.

From television true crime shows and web sites like CourtTV and its CrimeLibrary companion, I stay abreast of the news about evil baby rapers and serial killers who possibly troll for prey, announce their intentions, or boast of their accomplishments on web sites like My Face dot com or say Confidential Diary Secrets for My Absolute Best Friends Only dot dum.
Sometimes, thoughtless, grandiose gossips put it all out there for our voyeuristic pleasure, and just possibly their own self destruction. Consider the Fifth Nail Blog.
Knowing how the story ends makes it a creepy read, even from the safety of your own home. Google led me to one site that compared both the police account of Joe's activities with Joe's own blog accounts of his exploits. The revelations here SHOUT out loudly at least two morals/conclusions

1. Don't trust child molesting murderers - They may have an agenda


2. Blog entries make poor alibis

Now, using expertise I acquired from my junior high school gift subscriptions to two enlightening monthlies, Readers Digest and Psychology Today, and by researching the Duncan blog in conjunction with internet accounts, I am able to analyze Joe's sad little life for the court (which in my rich fantasy life is on an L&O spinoff ). Consider the following:

1. He claims he was molested frequently as a kid.


2. He's accused of raping/murdering a number of young boys


3. When, with the help of truly virtuous Citizens, the police nab the guy, he's dining with an abductee, a sister of a some poor little boy he mauled and murdered. Joe apparently abused the girl, but not quite to death.

ERGO - when he rapes and murders the little boys today, he's striking back as he was unable to as a boy, when he was then defenseless against the abuse. He hated himself for being exploited and exploitable, for being raped, with all the attendant hurt, guilt, proof of his inadequacy that allowed older boys or men to fuck him up and over. Now as an adult, he holds the power to avenge. Described by the mechanism of transference when he now rapes and kills, he is destroying the defective child of his youth who allowed the abuse, who deserved the shame and pain, while suffering silently and immensely because of it. He is finally in control.

EMIL SKODA, WATCH OUT

and Happy BD Heather

The Truth vs. James Dobson from Downtown!!!

While MJ dribbled with the divine, a Point Guard among point guards, a heavenly graced athlete who delivered layup after layup, his testimony to the Net, it was a (hypothetical) man of gods who killed Pete.

But false prophets, beware, for Pistol Pete Maravich was a man of the Net, yet one who ultimately dunked with the devil, committing the most flagrant T when he met James Dobson. Dr. Dobson, a Ph.D. psychologist, reached his infamy by focusing on the family and spewing out loving advice on a radio show. Famous for offering up child rearing alternatives to Dr. Spock, e.g. Bringing Up Boys - an inspiring instructional on raising righteous, real boys, the right reverend has been a public figure for a couple of decades now, spreading his brand of Christian love with pschological and political advice. He is one of the loudest voices of the religious right to whisper into Republican ears.

But the Lord's view of James is obvious, and Pete Maravich may well have died for his sins. Pistol Pete was a spiritual explorer who, though once a devout priest of the hallowed Game, became a free agent for a different god after retirement. Perhaps for his apostasy, Pete was smitten stone dead during a one on one pick up prayer just prior to an appearance on the Focus on the Family radio show. While James Dobson was not indicted in connection to Pete's mysterious and premature death, the conclusions to be drawn are clear.

DISCLAIMER - I loved CJ Cregg

AAJ believes it necessary to discuss a slight flaw in a favorite oracle with this DISCLAIMER and embarrassing admission:

I love the television show Law&Order: CI, and need Bobby Goren on the streets almost as much as I needed C.J. Cregg in the White House, or at least over to my home every Sunday night and endless BRAVO Monday.

However, the USA network exhausted all hyberbole related to ruin and mediocrity, when it pushed the phrase "Think Again!" ad nauseam through Vincent D'Onofrio in a queer brand of EXXTREME Crime Solving, a cheap sound bite more likely used to bait fans of John Wayne, than to reveal the essence of Bobby's more nuanced technique.

note to myself: Google fan fiction for "Bobby + CJ".

Dear AAJ: I'd like to ask the Junkie (cont. below)

Why so many pharmaceutical companies manufacture compounded pain relievers which combine opiates with acetaminophen?
Sincerely,
A Perplexed Aficionado of Percocet

An excellent question, APAP, if I did ask it myself. First, a brief discussion about hydrocodone (involving only a bit of math), and its packaging. There is so much more of course that can be said. But not always heard, depending on the length and severity of your addiction. Just ask Google.

1. Hydrocodone, late of Rush Limbaugh notoriety, seems to be available in a variety of dosages, and always mixed with acetaminophen, from 325 mg to more than twice that amount. For comparison, one Extra Strength Tylenol pill contains 500 mg of acetaminophen. As pharmacists and poison control centers are wont to say, 4 grams, or 4000 mg, is the most acetaminophen you want to dump on your liver a day, to avoid the necessity of an immediate liver transplant or the likelihood that Wal*%r$ns will not refill your script. Unless you're a rock star, sports hero, or very fiscally fit, that uniquely tailored liver replacement may be difficult to collect in a timely, life-saving manner.
2. While your prescription may suggest taking 1 or 2 pain pills every 4 to 6 hours for your distress, if for any reason you take more than 5 or 6 of the pills with 750 mg of the acetaminophen in a day, you are downing a toxic dose of pain relief. There's not enough hydrocodone there to kill most folks via respiratory arrest, as over use of opiates is notorious for doing, but the acetaminophen excess can overload your liver's metabolic capabilities and leave poisonous residues behind to wreak further hepatic havoc.
3. The DEA controls the hydrocodone compound in its schedule III manner, while acetaminophen is a weaker, over the counter, unscheduled analgesic. If people want to mix generic Tylenol with another medicine, they don't need a prescription for it. But if they want to take the hydrocodone for pain relief without acetaminophen, very special arrangements must be made. NB: the DIY ones found on the web involving cold water do not actually work.
4. Overdosages of many opiates can lead to foolishly sleepy behavior, and more fatally, respiratory arrest. The antidote to the opiate induced apnea is a small shot of one of several drugs, including naloxone, a.k.a. Narcan. It's generally best to administer this antidote intravenously, and there is also a fresh and true adage that "Any junkie can hit a vein", i.e. Narcan administration ain't hard to do. In a life threatening situation, an associate of the unconscious opiate user could spike a load of Narcan into the user, an act akin to pushing an Epi-Pen into someone who had just escaped a swarm of Africanized bees.
5. Returning now to the judgment of Big Pharma to sell the formulations that mix opiates with acetaminophen, one can simply assume that in their benevolence, the manufacturers mix the compounds because clinical trials have shown the mixture to have greater efficacy than either compound taken alone. The pill taking population then has one less choice to make with their hop headed muddled minds - whether or not to include a Tylenol with their Vicodin.
6. Alternatively, Big Pharma (along with the rest of the world) recognizes and appreciates the affects of opiates. These can be found for sale to the public without the acetaminophen in the form of non-FDA, non-DEA approved imports from, say, Afghanistan, or more safely and in better lit locals like the corner apothecary.

This a country that sprayed the leaves serious crops with poisonous paraquat. With patriarchal and punitive practices, Big Bad Pharma mixes the compounds so that as the body's tolerance and need for greater dosages of opiates rise with usage, the damage to the liver also increases, giving those disgusting dopers what they deserve, more pain and less liver function. Also, pills with tylenol are tougher to prep for IV administration, its purity being one of the reasons that oxycontin is so popular with us kids these days.

Workers of the World Unite! or a personal favorite "Bad spellers of the world untie!"

disclaimer: I'm not a biblical scholar, but I think per KJV, Jesus wanted us to love our neighbors. we could ask Pat or Georgie or Laura, I s'pose.

May day season and instead of the immigrants at Haymarket, it's time for at least George XLIII to discuss the perils of brown immigrants, and we probably mean illegal immigrants, if it's not always clear when you hear the talk on t.v.

Bush is from a border state so I guess he has to make a point, but he's also a loud Christian, he has surely heard a bible story depicting his holy father as a kind model for humanity. He preys on this fellow for advice on leading his 300 million.

So, though I wouldn't be rude in person, Ask a Junkie secretly wants to join the discussion on immigrants with him by shouting WHAT WOULD JESUS DO, you fucking moron?

But maybe that's just the gas prices talking.

Advice Column : Ask A Junkie

Dear Junkie -

As an MADD advisor and TOEFL instructor, I need a nice counting song for my immigrant friends that doesn't rely on liquor use, as say the 99 Bottles of Beer song that helped my family on road trips. Any ideas?
Respectfully,

What Did Jesus Drink?



Dear WDJD -

Implied in your signature is an important lesson we must share, and we want all readers to know the answer to that. As for learning to count in English so that you understand what the state trooper means when she tells you that your Breath-a-lyzer result is 223, let's go back twenty years to the children's band, the Violent Femmes. They wrote a catchy ditty called Kiss Off that emphasizes the metric system (counts to 10) and uses association techniques to help remember the numbers. Life's special devasting emotional events are ranked and then sung about as a memory aid for the numbers. Great for teenagers too.

On needing to share the intimate details of my uniquely fascinating life

A month or two back or forth an NPR show (Talk of the Nation ??) addressed issues of perceived privacy and anonymity on the net and how those perceptions influence the nature of on-line relationships. The chat rooms, discussion boards, etc., help unite people who would otherwise have had trouble finding each other. The internet offers a special, distant, protected kind of intimacy that can foster the development of rewarding relationships, ideally more often than it exploits naively revealing behavior. Internet dangers can range from being successfully stalked or losing one's financial identity to the more likely event of simply making an ass of one's self. The pictures you posted of your nude body draped in the flag of the Third Reich won't likely subject you to identity theft, but may disturb your employer, or the guy interviewing you after the first web surfing boss fired you.

Remember kids, freedom of speech is the law of the land, but it isn't without consequence. I personally wouldn't want to employ someone who hated cats, and appreciate my freedom to hire people I like to mow my lawn. But I wouldn't hire someone who had posted hizzelf lawnmowing a cat. (I mean, it's not like I'm Enterprise Cars, or even a small business owner).

Like a friend of mine who has endured a colleague sharing too much in hi,no her narrative of his/her drunken, promiscuous exploit last Tuesday, (unaware of, say the fact that the same sales rep in his/her story has tried to establish a sexual history with everyone else in the department already except my friend). A tad obtuse there and just a tad hungover, or early in the learning curve of life is how my friend described the goof. The fault of frequently proferring T.M.I. is, mercifully, frequently outgrown,and forgotten.

My own excuse in blogland here is that nobody reads this shit, or is forced to overhear it unwillingly.

But on the radio, talking crazy talk, they told of a Wayback machine (hence the Peabody and Sherman cartoon - didn't they time travel?) that maintained every incarnation of every web site that ever existed, so that by picking your point in time you could time travel the net, or at least the web as it once was.

Being overheard in the next cubicle is one thing, being the jerk mocked 'round the world is something else, and is potentially possible with the miracle of technology.

Which brings me to a downside of the internet - that what I (hypothetically) posted in public areas, maybe as a (hypothetical) sixteen year old, or then later as a serious job seeker with a (hypothetical)graduate degree - might always remain for all the world to see. That "Permanent Record" we've all been threatened with arrived last month while we were waiting to see what happened to Mr. Soprano.

One improbably soothing conclussion of the NPR show was that the internet is in its adolescence, that users are still negotiating a proper social code to cover the new kinds of e-relations out there. I must remember not only that what I post could be seen by potentially anyone, and interpretted in almost any way besides the way I meant, and I might want to learn to forgive and possibly tolerate folks who forget that discretion is the better part of valor.

I checked out the wayback site and was thrilled to find a web site that disappeared several years ago. The site is chock-full of technical data, its author promoted a mildly progressive point of view, and at the time the site went down, I wondered if it was because he was trying to get a straight job, join the establishment sort of thing. The site advocated nothing illegal or violent or even mean, but might possibly sound heretical to some. The guy seemed to be a young Ph.D. so I supposed the employers he sought might fear him as to be a(hypothetical)fiery eyed radical.

The picture is of a depiction of a flu strain of 1918 that helped end the war to end all wars.

MAFCC

An Epiphany burst upon me today, drops of sunlight through my cloud of gloom, proclaiming proudly and loudly, from the bottom of the oceans to the mountains of the moon, the essence of my mortality; demonstrating the grace accompanying the essence of life. A quick glance in the mirror of our medicine chest before I quickly and quietly yanked it open, reminded me that not only am I not getting any younger, I am not actually keeping it a secret either.

Early that morning, while mom was at church or the boat, or wherever she goes those five or six hours on Sundays after dressing up and leaving me alone without breakfast, it happened. I experienced a sudden leg and then foot cramp along the medial aspect of my right foot which fiercely clenched itself tight like a fist, ready to punch, unaware apparently that my thieving, lying, recently ex-ed girlfriend was not around to attempt to threaten or manipulate.


This foot-fist hurt and was clearly not simply for show or manipulation.
At this point, all my mojo gleaned from 20 odd years of professional health care experience emerged from its hunger and Sunday afternoon hangover, allowing me to assess my situation - hungry, alone in the otherwise empty house of a widow with countless full bottles of oxycontin, methadone, and morphine that her husband had repeatedly purchased but had almost never been able to find or remember in which cranny, nook, or hand of his daughter he had stored them. Lacking much in the way of upper extremities as a result of time he spent in Asia, the intravenous drugs worked best anyway, as even non childproof caps are hard to remove from bottles when you have no fingers.

About the dead man – husband and dad:
For some months in the middle of the last century, he took a sabbatical from college to hang out with some new Korean friends (whose language he was mastering) and occasionally pondered what he might do when he grew up / got out of school and service. It seems Georgian cuisine "ranger" not the "cajun" of nearby Louisiana, was not much to write home about. He had been a young, rattlesnake eating military second lieutenant, who leapt out of airplanes and killed Asians at the behest of his government, to keep the world safe from democracy.




After that stint ended, lacking arms and reasonable cognitive skills, the Department of Veteran Affairs never seemed to give a flying fuck/rat\s ass/ [insert favorite here] about his well being. He himself developed a driving obsession of the sort I have noticed in other folks who have experienced serious head injuries, to determine along just which part of the 38th parallel he had mis-placed his two arms, but he got mainly frustration for that, as there were no real answers to give, and I believe they sunk in the Sea of Japan. The GI Bill certainly helped a bit, but leap forward fifty more years with the spirit of Idi Amin alive in Pyongyang, many thousands more deformities and deaths for the kids, and if Johnny got his gun the threat from radioactive fission destruction remains.


Like most health care agencies that I have associated myself with, i.e. under funded public ones, quality of life is not much they can do much about, and tests for vague complaints of shoulder pain are good for a laugh. All told, the shoulder hurt for just shy of 70 months and if the VA medicos were not treating him as a retard with a strained trapezius muscle, they tried the malingering armless man approach. I cannot help but wonder if it was not the fact that spelling and reading hand written medical h&p-s can be so f-ing complex, that all the while they described him as malingering, the VA actually meant to use the word -malignant-, since after just five years of seeking relief, a palpable cue ball size mass became obvious near the site of the pain he had been objecting to for the past five years.



At least at that point they started in with the extra strength Tylenol as apparently some metastasized cancers hurt. Eventually, that dreaded side effect from opiate use, that “euphoria” took over his life, and "haunted" him to the end.



At which point I felt it incumbent upon myself to first locate and then carefully track those dozens of expensive bottles of capsules and tablets to heaven that were strewn about the home. Wouldnot want the roaches or rats nibbling their way into some euphoria pills mom or I might find better use for. It is common to give rats with anti-clotting medicine like warfarin that humans take, but I am almost positive the reasons are different. I am not really sure who would care about the INR of sewer rats, but I know it would be awkward if a human crawled into wall of her home and bled to death.

Back now to the tale of my debilitating disease. The cramping grew increasingly bothersome and visions of electrolyte imbalances danced through my head, as I do in fact enjoy the Sugar Plum Fairy song, and had taken an extra diuretic or two the day before. I so hate it when my feet look fat.


I soon diagnosed myself as having acquired the rare, painful, orphan disease medial aspect foot cramp cancer, that while generally fatal within five to seven decades of the first, often overlooked symptoms, is always painful and limits employment opportunities, except for the one rare but well documented cases of working as a sea kayaking tour guide, the only profession generally suitable for patients with MAFCC.

Special kayak construction allows these patients to not burden society, maintain their self esteem, and afford any palliative treatments they may need, or meds they be able to locate only in Mexico.
Bravely, and with but weeks remaining to come to terms with my existence on this mortal coil, I wandered into the kitchen and located one of mom/'s osteopenia preventatives. Without delay I sucked down that Ca ⁺⁺ supplement and rummaged around the kitchen a bit more searching for anything else that her shrinking memory might have forgotten to remind her to take.

Guest Advisor Discusses the 1965 Epic, Dr Z

Today AAJ proudly yields the page to CHE who in her capacity as a bitter, spent, barren spinster reviews the Oscar winning romantic epic story of Boris Pasternak - Dr. Zhivago.


A:Way overrated movie
or

B: an elaboration

Tonya and Lara

• true love hidden in the aftermath, snow covering the hope of spring. This they know because the Poet sang


• late of doey eyed devotion to Poet Yuri


• exiled from their aristocratic White (as in not Commie Red) Eden


• a cozy nest with Tonya in a post revolution workers paradise, housing but fifty to the boxcar

Yuri

• Dashing and dark, artiste gallant, gentle but strong (White Cloud like?)


• healing physician conscripted by brutes waging merciless slaughters for dubious causes


• senses and soul, or at least lust and erectile function, untarnished intact

Orchestral rhapsodies accompany adoring gazes both from of Tonya and Lara; offered in Love, they follow Dr Z as he writes, as he dreams, as he struggles*, as he perserveres alone and unsucked**, as he farts and flosses, as he cherishes Tonya, mother of his son, while Lara, mother of his daughter, bucks him silly. Visions and verse shine in the beauty of Siberian exile ice; deceit but a God given gift as Lonya and Tara kneel at the altar of the Poet Prick.
Rich they are in the grace of Bard, the occassionally bedded are deceived into rejecting worldly protection in the form of Viktor, a man rich with lust, with jealousy, and even truth that nobody wants
Dr Z knows that the quiet the dark and handsome will inherit the earth, and probably get laid tonight.
But it would not be a morality play if the wages of worshipping false gods were not death, so after the war, after the potential products of heterosexual sex develop without Poet, after lusting in vain in the street, Poet falls dead and unlaid. Maybe at the funeral a wreath got lucky and ... got ...laid.

And the thing takes up two entire video casettes.
*-as only a man can struggle
**-loneliness defined as no sex with a woman for over one week

The French Fry Returns with Memorial Thoughts for My Uncle and Jerry Garcia

If there are many paths to follow, with many rows to hoe, there are also at least some decent RayBans to shade the way. This route I'm trying seems cloudy and overcast, passing through Europe and the politics of the twentieth century to the rap I once caught on Lost In Space, "Crush, Kill, Destroy."

Over the years I've visited old stories about the Germans, Hitler youth, skinhead resurgence, etc., without ever crossing the border into Vichy. French seemed too hard to pronounce and wasn't offered in my high school. But now, by choosing another tyne of the spork in the road, I'm seeing more sides of the shallow wiki-places to be seen on Our Friend, The Internet.

That's the problem with idle hands sometimes. A little free time allows room for all these questions to clank around my head, noisily enough to keep me from sleep, but the loudest when I should at least be trying to rest.


NOTE TO SELF: Remember the practice on meditation, the Zen focus that seems so healthy while facilitating travel and quieting my mind.

And about those French - Maybe, just maybe, a very tiny part of the puzzle, this post war mix of all levels of collaborators with all minds of resistance, helps explain in part just why these folks, the sophisticated French, for god's sake, a people with created the notions of 1789, with sophistication embedded in their bones, why do these folks seem so f-ing weird?
Well, of course, it's stupid to think that sixty million people will be driven by any less than sixty million motives, i.e. they're probably no "weirder" than any other group of people.
And another thing, I am asking you, Deutschland - after taking so many centuries to finally become a unified state, why did nationalism drive you Boche so fanatically. And from where exactly did that word Boche come, and how is it pronounced?

MEANWHILE,
what I am learning about Vichy?

1. Well, first of all, even bad politicians demand comfort from their constituents/subjects. The folks who surrendered to Hitler of course chose a resort town with fine hotels, spas, and casinos to seat their occupied, sold out government of France.


2. It (Vichy collaboration) may have seemed like the best of bad choices, but how could the anti Semitism be justified? Easily enough I suppose for any number of Christians, especially those under duress, or already so inclined.


3. The quality of mercy is not strained - even if The Merchant was anti Semitic.

In defense of my ignorance of a torn nation, I was only 8 when Marcel Ophuls presented Le Chagrin et la pitie. Hell, the Civil War of 1860 is still being fought in parts of the U.S. France with only sixty years to "heal", must still have a few bodies to bury.

What I imagine about then...
Sitting in some hot crowded street cafe, loud locals and runaways to Bordeaux, drunk and fearful, hoping their boat comes in before the troops arrive. I cannot imagine why any of the refugee-wannabees / hopeful-evacuees could have any faith that anyone would save them at that point, just after the rout at Dunkirk. Anyone here means the leaders of the antique regimes that did not exactly win well in its youth. The allied fascists must have been delighted for a moment, figuring the NSDAP was the beast to bet on, sensing some hope, not the treason they might be shot for in just a few years.

What I'm learning now...

For instance there's the addition to my vocabulary (from which reference site I forget)

HEGEMONY (hegemonic): The processes by which dominant culture maintains its dominant position: for example, the use of institutions to formalize power; the employment of a bureaucracy to make power seem abstract (and, therefore, not attached to any one individual); the inculcation of the populace in the ideals hegemonic group through education, advertising, publication, etc.; the mobilization of a police force as well as military personnel to subdue opposition.

There's the history I first learned in my reading about de Gaulle and Petain:
Mers El Kebir

The Algerian harbor of allied intervention against Vichy ships.

The Lion swallowed the Frog that day to prevent some of the French Navy from becoming part of the German Navy.

The British and French could not reach an understanding, so the Brits killed more than a thousand French sailors, in 1940, in the summer of surrender.

To be fair, war is bad. France planned its share of action against the Brits, it's just that the old saw about Googling "French Military Victories" has teeth here.

So much to learn.
When I just imagine all that allied double crossing during War, my own naivete and gullibility shocks and embarrasses me. My troubles only grow as I try to learn keyboard tricks for the additional alphabet characters attached to so many French vowels. In the back of my head some synapses, Greek chorus like, keep singing "the medium is the massage".
The Cast of Vichy Characters, a starting line up:

• Charles de Gaulle: Among other more incrdible feats, he spent his years in WWI as a German POW attempting numerous escapes and avoiding firearm assaults and influenza infections.



• Philippe Petain: Fame first at Verdun in 1916, the Marshal was something like eighty-four years old when he began his role in Vichy, once respected by de Gaulle, his death penalty for his treason conviction was commuted by deGaulle, and he died in a prison-ish hospital in 1951 at the age of 243 or so. Recently, I enjoyed this book, Petain, Hero or Traitor: The Untold Story,ISBN: 0688037569, by Herbert R. Lottman.



• Maurice Gamelin: a general of the third republic, eventually sent to prison in Germany by the Vichy folk after the Riom trials.



• Edouard Daladier: leading member of the Radicals, the Popular Front of French Third Republic, arrested by Vichy-men, spent several years as Buchenwald inmate.



• Leon Blum: Jewish PM three times even, Popular Front man, after an eloquent performance at the farce of Riom imprisoned in Germany, barely escaping with his life.



• Paul Reynaud : A third republic PM, a minister of Justice, agreed with Chamberlain either to or not to accept aseparatee peace with Germans, spent several years as Nazi prisoner but survived the war.



• Pierre Laval: Admiral pro Nazi, wildly unappreciated for his collaborations.



• Francois Darlan - Vichy leader, somewhat less a Nazi than Laval, assassinated in Algiers in 1942, apparently by the Free French fighters. It seems that many of the French were more anti British than pro German.



• Maxime Weygand: soldier of both world wars, Vichy political leader, served in the Vichy government as minister of defense, anti Dreyfuss in his youth, held by Germans for about 3 years, considered a collaborator but exonerated by some French in 1948.

you said green was your favorite color, r.i.p. dad