Yeah, my email's getting intercepted

I had a big spike in the number of viewers on the blog, the day that I mentioned the blog in my advertisement, but I still haven't gotten emails except for the ones that have been changed to fake spam letters. I'm sure I would have gotten hate mail or something, anything at all, such as 'Who are you to create your own religion?' or 'What is this fad diet you're talking about? There's no scientific data supporting that,' or something. Not even a word of hate mail. I'd think people were curious or hostile or even just bored enough to send me a letter telling me what a moron I am, but no, not a word. Not a single word about 'Is this a joke?' or anything.

I missed the second meeting of the Order because of the snowstorm. I'm the only member attending the meeting, of course, and it's not really a meeting - it's just me giving people the opportunity to talk to me without getting their emails or phone calls intercepted by hackers. I don't have a meeting agenda or application forms for people to fill out or anything formal at all. I still need to do more hackerproof advertisements and communication methods - which means, pieces of paper hung up on bulletin boards in the real world. I wouldn't care so much if all the hackers did was snoop and read the email, but no, they have to intercept it and actually prevent me, or the other person, from getting it.

I am having a bad week. The chemical sensitivity problem is out of control and I think it's the reason why I'm having heart attack symptoms - temporary, transient heart attacks that happen occasionally, several times a day. I think it is caused by grayanotoxin poisoning. That began on the day when I was 'encouraged' to go take photos up-close of the rhododendrons in Black Moshannon, and I got the poison on the bottom of my shoes and tracked it into my car. But I'm pretty sure it also comes from other members of that family, and my new apartment has two plants, which I think are domesticated azaleas, and they are also poisonous. They are in a couple places beside the parking lot, and I have to walk right next to one in order to get in and out of the laundry room.

Why don't people know about transdermal poisoning? Why doesn't the mainstream culture know that the whole rhododendron family is poisonous? First, people are taught that the only way to be poisoned is by eating something. Since we have enough food in the grocery store, we don't usually go foraging, so nobody bothers teaching their kids to recognize and avoid the local poisonous plants. They know that the kids won't ever have any reason to go eating wild plants. And since eating is 'the only' way to get poisoned, we don't need to worry about knowing anything about them at all.

I searched on the net for 'heart attack' and 'rhododendrons.' There was one news article I found about a guy who dropped dead of a heart attack while judging the rhododendrons at a show of the Rhododendron Society, or something like that. They said, 'At least he died while doing something he loved.' I can't believe that they don't know he died BECAUSE of doing something he loved! Touching and handling any plants in the rhododendron family is suicidal.

Plant poison goes directly through the skin. You can get it by touching the plant or by walking next to the plant and getting it on your shoes. You can inhale the rhododendron poison if you drive past the plants in your car. When a hunter dies of a heart attack out in the woods, or when a seven year old cub scout dies suddenly of a heart attack while hiking in New Mexico (yes, I read some news article with something like that, but I might have the details wrong), it probably happens because they touched a poisonous plant next to the hiking trail and didn't know it. Out in the desert, it might be a species of Ephedra. Here in Pennsylvania, it's rhododendron that kills you.

So I have to patch up the parts of the carpet that have gotten contaminated, which means I will be laying down cardboard boxes all over the floor, and waiting until I can buy my own house, possibly a trailer or RV, where I can have vinyl floors instead of carpets, and I don't have to worry about landlords or handymen coming into the house and tracking stuff around because they don't know that I have certain areas where you can walk or where you can't.

I need to get in touch with the self-reliance people and the survivalists. I know that some of them are connected with Libertarians and other minarchist-anarchist groups. They know more about getting off the grid, living in an RV, and other things you can do to drastically reduce your rent payments. I agree with FSK and others who have argued that property taxes are just another type of rent paid to the government, for all practical purposes. I've had to cut my work hours because of the heart problem and I shouldn't have to work so many hours anyway just to pay my rent.

It would be very difficult for me to get a roommate when I have this contamination and chemical sensitivity. Still, I'm considering getting a roommate. That would reduce my rent, but not enough. It would help - I'd pay only about $200 instead of $400 (it's actually $415 right now - it went up) - but I'd like to cut it more than that, but it's illegal to put more people into a 'single' apartment even though it's a huge place and I could fit six people in there if they had a minimalist lifestyle without many belongings, or kept their belongings in storage. It violates the fire codes or something if you have too many people.

So anyhow, though, about the meetings, I'm not quitting, since I enjoy going and reading a book at Barnes & Noble for its own sake, and I usually do that on my days off. The official time is Tuesdays, 7:00 - 8:00 PM, at Barnes & Noble in State College, PA. Anybody who has experienced problems with telephones or email would be able to talk to me there. It's hard to approach a total stranger who seems to be absorbed in reading Harry Potter, but I can read the book anytime - it can wait. I might sit someplace else, maybe not next to the cafe, but I'll be in there someplace.

There will also be some ads written on paper hung up in physical locations around the area, but I haven't made those yet. I also need a web page where the details are written down neatly, so that people can go glance at it. I need a paper leaflet that can be handed out too.

I keep thinking about Diana Leafe Christian's books about intentional communities, about which ones fail and which ones succeed.

This doesn't involve any large amounts of money. The only money involved is the cost of transporting yourself to Barnes & Noble at that particular hour of the day, whether it's by bus or by car, and whether you have to take a day off work or change your schedule in order to get there. So I don't have the problem that the intentional communities have, where you need to find trustworthy people who will make payments on the land that they buy in your community, and hundreds of thousands of dollars are at stake. I like to say, 'This is nothing.' There's nothing going on, except people talking about unusual topics that people don't usually talk about. I get voices in my head responding to the fact that I put up an advertisement for the Order. They were all excited about it, and also, uncertain - are we doing the right thing? So I keep saying, this is nothing. All we're doing is meeting people and talking.

I want to think my own thoughts and feel my own feelings without being controlled. I want to speak my own words, read a book without getting zapped and distracted, pay attention when I'm having a conversation with someone, interpret things the way I want to interpret them, look at the future and make my own plans, use my insight to understand the world, without being attacked. For that, I need some technical people who can advise me about how to build a shield - although the first prototype shields are just low-tech, cheap things that don't work very well - but in the long run there will have to be shielded rooms that actually work. People need someplace to go, temporarily, where they can't be attacked. They need someplace to sleep without having any dreams and without being woken up every hour or two and forced to remain awake after having had only a couple hours of sleep every day.