March 15, 1998
Dear Mom,

     "Well, hyar I am writing agin', since I ain't got too much else to do an' I git to use this see-well kumputer now what ahm a Level Foah!"

     Haw Haw!  I did at least get one nice piece of mail this week, a check for $480 from my sub-licensor Logic Associates... it's better than nothing.  I am thinking about how to handle the databeast end of things to my best advantage--prior to coming in I notified CRF (the Cornell Research Foundation, from which I license the original Comet code) that I was waiving the exclusive license to the source code (and the $10,000 minimum yearly license fee it entailed), which I might be able to turn to advantage by finding licensors who want the source code to Comet/dataComet to produce their own versions (or guarantee that they'll be able to support it indefinitely).  The problem would be in the glacial pace with which the CRF handles licensing requests, but possibly we could find a way to negotiate a standard contract which would speed the process up.  dataComet's  "Steamed Crabby" award should make it easier to persuade folks of its value (one advantage "BetterTelnet", a competitor, has is that the source code is freely available, although you're not allowed to produce commercial versions and are required to make your versions publicly available--this is a legal innovation known as a "copyleft"!).

     One potential customer for a spin-off is a competing firm which sells a secure Telnet, employing a protocol known as "ssh" which encrypts the communications so that it's much more difficult for third parties to eavesdrop on your communications.  I basically have to add this functionality to dataComet to remain competitive, which is a pain for two reasons: 1) you have to support multiple encryption techniques and 2) the federal government has "munitions export" laws which forbid you to export computer software which supports encryption to foreign countries (yup, they've got ‘em already, but you're not allowed to sell them to ‘em!).  This competitor is located in Sweden, so it has a competitive advantage: they can ship anywhere, while I can't!  Meanwhile, their terminal emulation is pretty weak, (weak enough that someone working at a site which requires use of the "ssh" protocol contacted me, inquiring as to whether I'm going to support it, since they weren't satisfied with "F-Prot", while I have a very fast and functional product--ergo, there's potential for a deal here.  Possibly they could just buy out databeast, possibly some other kind of licensing deal could be arranged...

     As far as bills are concerned, I think it would be helpful if you'd cover the payment due on the Bank One bill enclosed here ($721).  I strongly prefer not to go bankrupt, since it basically doesn't agree with my principals, and I believe I WILL be able to pay back what I owe... including what I owe to you... this depends primarily on how the court disposes of my case, which in turn depends partly on the diagnosis which the psychiatrists here make, but I think things look fairly good at this point.  E.g., after 6 weeks here, they've yet to prescribe any medications, I have no violations, have gotten along well with the staff, and have proceeded to Level 4 as rapidly as possible; Dr. Singh hasn't talked with me in three weeks... Dr. Kennedy has been away, so I haven't seen him in two weeks, and he hasn't yet arranged for the blood tests to determine whether I have the autoimmune disease (CIDP), but he was working at arranging this with a colleague in neurology at Strong Memorial (interestingly enough, US News and World Report ranked this University of Rochester med school 3rd in training GPs, though I sure enough never heard of it before).  Dr. Kennedy said they need to work out whether I have to go over to Strong (involving an escort, etc.) or whether they can bring the test kit over here and then send in the test to the test lab facility (a national lab, no doubt) from here--"this is exception, but we've made a lot of exceptions in your case!" (E.g., bringing me straight down to the first floor rather than through the first floor, which has more wackos and more observers, including observers secure behind a nice glass window so they can call in the more uniformed-type police OMH (Office of Mental Health) officers if there's a commotion that gets way out of hand!).

     E.g., as far as money goes, there's the possibility that the doctors will implicate Prozac, which means that Eli Lilly will presumably be inclined to dip into the fund it maintains for just such cases... and as I mentioned, I'm presuming that I'll be certified as a suffering from a disability--the resident nut-house lawyer claims that ALL NGRI ("Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity", which acronym is usually used to indicate a Section 330.20 plea under NY law, though it's really "Not Responsible by Reason of Mental Disease or Disorder") cases are qualified to receive Social Security--though this is usually the case it would probably depend on the diagnosis--there are diagnoses in the DSM-IV of "Brief Reactive Psychosis", which allow for the possibility of psychotic behavior occurring simply due to extreme stress in the environment without the presence of a persistent psychiatric disorder, but it sounds as if Dr. Singh doesn't much believe in that one!  (Maybe I'll get a novel diagnosis indicating psychosis occurred as a result of "excessive reading"!)

     And then of course there's the inevitable lawsuit against Family and Children's Service, which believe you me screwed up handling my case about as badly as they could--you never read the diagnosis or notes they took, indicating that not only did they lie to me about my diagnosis (that's criminal fraud on top of malpractice) but noted that I was "delusional (paranoid?)" as they were kicking me out--BTW, a tactic explicitly contraindicated for cases of Borderline Personality Disorder (their bogus personality disorder diagnosis, of which they informed me--NOT!), who tend to suffer from psychotic breaks under stress!  Note that Susan also has the option of  bringing a lawsuit for say, $500,000? $1,000,000? claiming that they should have had me committed rather than kicking me out on the street, inasmuch as they were claiming in their notes that I was very very marginal and "either unwilling or unable to take responsibility for my behaviors" (such as being framed for a DWI--these folks never heard of the principal "innocent until proven guilty"!  Naw, they were teaching me lessons about "trust"--by lying to me while taking my money!!!!  WOW!  Fortunately I have survived and my sense of humor remains intact!!).

     Actually just quoting from the DSM-IV in a civil trial against FCS would be damning--for example, the language about the risk of psychosis in borderline patients is quite clear (the name itself comes from the observation that borderline patients occupy a zone between functional if unhappy neurotic behaviors and full-time full-blown psychotic symptoms featuring a genuine loss of reality testing which you see in schizophrenia).  Of course, I'm not borderline, but you'd figure that if they made the diagnosis they might at least respect the risks clearly noted for the diagnosis in the diagnostic manual.

     One of the things about my experience which strikes me as weird is the contrast between the way doctors and psychologists diagnose physical and mental  illnesses--the assumption seems to be that one is "hysterical  until proven physically ill", and I get the sense that MD's and psychologists are all closet disciples of Mary Baker Eddy, and really believe that all illnesses are psychological in origin ("if only your mind and spirit were healthy, you would just shrug off this broken leg: rise and walk!"  E.g., to diagnose a mental illness a psychiatrist talks with you for a couple of hours, and may then write you off as a sufferer of "paranoid schizophrenia" or "bipolar disorder" ; to diagnose a neurological illness, even when the patient is presenting with clearly indicative physical complaints they put you through EEGs, MRIs, CAT and PET scans, imposing a much higher standard of proof (especially so considering that MS, epilepsy, etc. won't show up in the tests unless they're really bad).  I believe this hesitance to diagnose physical problems stems from a desire to keep folks from malingering and claiming disability benefits (etc.), but it seems really uncharitable and unChristian to me: "Well, you say you're sick, eh, how come you're walking?  You look fine to me!  Come back when you can't make it in by yourself!".  It's really inconsiderate to those who are ill, like doctors only hardly ever making house calls--when you're sick and vulnerable to contagion, you should go hang out in a doctor's office with a bunch of other sick people (like the morning we went in when I had pneumonia--I just flashed on it--I recall we spent what seemed like hours waiting in an exam room, all the while I was shivering from fever!  I seem to recall Dr. Farmer coming over to our house in the week after that, so I guess I can't complain all that much about his conduct...).

     Yeah, one amusing thing that showed up in my research is that the first ever diagnosed case (1854) of "Landry's Ascending Paralysis," which today is called "Guillain-Barre Syndrome" mostly because Dr. Landry died young, is that the attending physician, Dr. Landry's superior, diagnosed the patient, who presented with a paralysis which was ascending gradually up his legs and arms, as suffering from--you got it!--hysteria!  Dr. Landry, recognizing this as a previously unknown neurological ailment, took it seriously and got his name included in the annals of medical history.  Alas, the patient died anyway, proving at the very least that "hysterical" illnesses can be 100% fatal!  Presumably Dr. Landry's superior summarized the case with "The cause of death this in this case must be attributed to a bad attitude!"

     And speaking of the pneumonia, the records from St. Vincent's have shown up.  Weirdly enough Sue Heagney says that the school records don't indicate a nine-week absence from school--though I have the impression she hadn't really checked it out.  Sue alas has been another party taking the line that "well, if you were really sick a doctor would have diagnosed it", which fortunately the genuine MD's seem to have eschewed (after all, they are aware that I was diagosed with psoriatic arthritis, which Believe It or Not is associated with psychosis!  The association is due, I believe, to the fact that the arthritis is an autoimmune disorder, and the bumps which appeared on my head from the arthritis were induced by a heightened immune state in which immune system chemicals which have powerfully deranging effects on the central nervous system, e.g., interleukin, are produced in abundance.  The field of "psychoneuroimmunology," which studies the interaction of the CNS and the immune system, is about 1 year old now, so there remains much progress to be made in figuring out how it all works...  One nice quotation I found on the network was a comment made by a neuroscientist at a public lecture, in which he referred to a number of good books written by neurologists for the lay public on the subject of human consciousness and how the brain works to host it, but stated "don't worry too much if you haven't read any of these yet...they're already growing out of date, every year our knowledge of the brain-mind system is growing dramatically, so that three years from know we'll be saying that most of what we know about the brain has been learned in the past year!"

     Interestingly, this week on the news there were citations of a study which held that 180,000 Americans die every year from "avoidable mistakes" while they're hospitalized!  (That's 8 times the number that are killed in accidents involving a DWI note that DWIs include accidents where a drunken pedestrian gets run over!... also that nobody usually tries to determine whether automobile deaths involving DWI in single-car accidents are in fact suicides... which would be quite interesting to know, given that this is one of the few ways to easily fake an "accidental" death so that you--or your survivors, at any rate--can collect on your insurance policies...).
  
     Anyway, I am sorry if I was a dreadful grouch in March, but besides being weirded out by the Prozac I was also incredibly pissed off that I had gotten so physically ill and that no-one besides you really offered me any help with it.  I'd always thought that I'd be able to get medical help if I got sick, but it turns out that if you're among the walking wounded and somehow you've been labelled "seriously mentally ill" already--which amazingly had been thoroughly accomplished by 1/11/97 when I went into the emergency room with a reputation as a transvestic nurse-raping would-be cop killer--you're gonna receive third-class medical care, even if you do have good manners!  Gee, you never even saw the Ithaca Police Department document relating my "Threat against a Police Officer", which paints a lurid portrait indeed--"[Saunders] has threatened to kill Sergeant Curatolo at the earliest opportunity."  Amazing shit, if you'll pardon the appropriate language!  Susan, by the way, disclaims responsibility for the Kill Curatolo theme, and says that the cops brought it up themselves... evidently they did not care for the way I was showing up in public with a camera photographing the path I'd taken the night I was--Set Up?  Or Accidentally Drugged and then Tailgated by a Perjuring Officer?  Whatever!  I'll never know!--for the DWI, and thought already that I was up to No Good!

     Well anyway, whatever, no wonder the cops were following me around the night preceding the arson... I had kinda noticed and thought it was strange that there was a cop car around every corner, it fit into the emerging Hannibal Lecter is Loose with Anthrax theme quite nicely.  Naturally the authorities have not owned up to helping create and reinforce my delusional state... it's ironic how various efforts to paint me as a social menace fit right in with the Lecter Entrapment theme (note, I'm supposed to be a bad guy, so Lecter will be interested in me!  This entails a fake DWI, a fake sexual assault charge, an unnecessary Order of Protection, a phony "Threat against a Police Officer", right?).  

     Of course it was never exactly clear to me what in the hell was supposed to happen if and when the "Hannibal Lecter, I presume?" moment came to pass... the night of the arson it seemed clear that the entire affair had been arranged by and for Lecter for the sake of entertainment: "Remember, Lecter loves his little games."

     Ironically, no one who reads the newspapers will think I'm crazy now for asserting that a lone madman could kill millions of people using anthrax, even though a couple of the shrinks who examined me last year evidently thought so... Saddam Hussein and the FBI charges against Harris helped focus public attention on the threat of biological warfare by terrorists, and the media have noted with admirable perspicacity that just about anybody can get into the bio-terror "business".  Whoopeee.

     So changing from this distressing topic, I hope you're doing OK.  I'm getting kinda antsy to get back home, and am concerned that Loopsa is going to be mighty upset at being mostly abandoned for 2 whole months, but hopefully I'll be able to make it up to him/her/it.  At least I'm confident that Carl is taking care of feeding Loopsa and watering the plants... a good thing that I let him hunt deer on the property, no?  Doing favors for your neighbors often seems to yield consideration in return...

     I hope the weather's OK down there etc., and that the tornadoes are mostly missing Arkansas.