It's been 18 months now since my stepbrother killed my mother and then himself. Stepbrother was insane, help was attempted prior to the event but was for naught, and it happened. Case closed as a legal matter.

My particulars are different than yours--I get largely spared the form of anger which appears to revolve around justice and the suffering you know your father needlessly endured. You get spared a pile of my particulars that there would be no point in describing. In my case there's literally no one to blame and yet still consider oneself rational.

But I know where you're coming from. I could have written much of your letter.

I cannot speak to the validity, helpfulness, or efficacy of the suggestions outlined here. Yes, there was therapy and there were friends and acquaintances and a compassionate employer, and these have all helped.

But really, in the end, it's just time. I have recognized the pattern of this trauma from previous lesser ones. There's no magic wand that you wave and it goes away.

You just don't get over this shit, no matter how much you want to. Wanting to, and thinking that you should rationally be able to, mean exactly jack and shit here, and only people who've been through it understand this. I've wanted to plenty. I've thought I should have been able to plenty. But I wasn't, and eventually I came to accept that.

Time: At first it's dozens of times a second you're thinking about it. Then, months later, it's several times a minute. 18 months later, for me, entire hours may go by without thinking about it. I have nights now where I sleep continuously. Not all of them but they exist now.

My "advice" such as it is would be that, brutally. Time will go by and eventually you will persevere. These suggestions may help; who am I to say, since a lot of them I did not actually try. But my take on it is that they're only helpful in passing the time that it takes for you to become more functional. It's the passing of time itself that is the actual thing.

Totally agree. That crap about "the past" was a golden opportunity to hit it out of the park, and "the past is prologue" was a bunt. Joe 6-pack absolutely didn't get that one. Whoosh, right over the head.

Honestly that was THE most disturbing moment of the whole debate for me--not his response, but that she was advancing it as a rationale.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard a variant on that from out of the mouths of, well, the mentally ill. That was YESTERDAY! This is TODAY! I'm not the same person I was yesterday, why are you clinging to the past?

Uh, because I would have to be as insane as you are to forget that yesterday you were nuts, and have provided no evidence to the contrary today, other than that I should suddenly believe you appeared spontaneously out of nowhere this morning, which would also make me nuts?

Anyway, yeah. I agree that Biden could have connected with a real political haymaker on that one, and I was a tad disappointed.

Also a tad disappointed in the format. I would have loved a follow-on...ANY follow on, like after she glibly mentioned, say, "Sunni", I would have loved to hear, "Well, governor, exactly what IS a Sunni, and how does your plan account for the differences you see between them and the Shiites," or anything that would have revealed that these words are nothing more than talking points, as was obvious anyway. But she was never challenged on anything.

Biden would obviously not have missed a step if that was turned on him, but Palin? Mayday, mayday, we're going down!

I had an almost immediate streak going, 4 out of 5 along the top row, but I never heard "earmark", and eventually I lost.

I got shafted on my card with "Russia" and "Putin" and other prior gaffes, and you KNOW there's no way she was being coached to go anywhere near those.

Hey, thank you so much for the link. Went there, read that. I got that SAME fucking e-mail forwarded to me this very morning, and I've been in kind of a low-level enraged state ever since.

I've decided it can't go without a response to the forwarder, and you've given me a shitload of ammo. Thanks again.

Um, dunno, but I get Dish also, and also get, I believe, the lowest-rent package possible that included some HD feeds. I think it's called "America's Top 100". I have a difficult time even FINDING Fox, not that I ever actually intentionally try.

It could be the particular satellites faoi is able to get, I seriously have no clue. But on my Dish there is no shortage of news channels all over the place. CNN, MSNBC, yadda yadda.

Plus, if you want to get all conspiracy, didn't the Obama campaign actually BUY full time on one of the Dish channels for a couple of days or weeks? All Obama ad 24/7. Never watched it, but I read a news blurb about it.

In all seriousness I hardly ever watch the damn thing (while BSG is on hiatus, that is :)). But there's no way in my experience with it that you can say Fox is even being given prominence there, never mind being put in your face.

...but handshaking is traditionally a right-handed thing and the wedding band is traditionally a left-handed thing, without regard to the right or left handedness of the subject.

I guess the criteria would be, do the other candidates remove their bands and for the same reasons.

He must be off at a convention or something. Maybe he got abducted. Hope springs eternal.

= James Cameron.

The clown car must have thrown a rod today.