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Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1998 22:44:01 -0400
From: Wrolf Courtney <wrolf@co*.ne*>
To: kirvine@sa*.ne*
CC: ahall@di*.co*, cavers@ca*.co*, techdiver@aquanaut.com
Subject: Re: Name That Lie, Re: tripple this Re: CONTINUOUS REBREATHER DEATHS was Re: Death was a Bigot
Katherine V. Irvine wrote:
> 
> I have not seen this ( Gilliam's page, but will look into it), but I can
> assure you that I stopped using any form of drugs, including alcohol,
> many, many years ago.

Good show.

Are you a former cocaine addict?

> How about the people who are making the
> accusations? Anyone care to comment.

The article is:

FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE INTERNET, by Bret Gilliam,
http://www.tdiusa.com/articles/fear.html
reprinted from Deep Tech Journal, 3rd Quarter 1997.

The quote, from about a quarter of the way into the article, is:
"Another prominent tech diver shared the opinion that "George is
mentally unbalanced. As a reformed cocaine addict, he seems to want to
give the impression that he is now religious. That's a joke. Look at
what he writes. This guy has no sense of decency or moral perspective.
He's like
a mad dog attacking anyone who disagrees with him in some futile attempt
at self-aggrandizement. He's incoherent."

> I will not, but those who live in
> South Florida, step on up and maybe you can tell us the real score here.

To save everyone the trouble, I am not asking you whether you are
a current cocaine user.  I am asking you whether you are a reformed
cocaine addicted, as reported by Brett Gilliam, quoting an anonymous
figure.

The answer would I expect from such a question would be one of the
following:

a)  Yes.  I am proud of my achievement, and have gone on to help others.

b)  Yes.  This was one of the saddest and hardest episode of my lives,
which included switching jobs, moving from New York to Florida to get
away from that scene, leaving all my friends behind because I could not
be with them without being with their drugs.  But I have found faith in
a higher power, and I am managing to move  through life one day at a
time.  Please leave this as a private matter.  I am not proud of the
things we did back in the old days with expense accounts and OPM (other
people's money), and I would like to move on.

c)  No.

d)  No, I have a full head of hair.

e)  My lawyer will be in contact with you shortly.  On advise of
counsel, I decline to answer that question.

f)  I decline to answer that question.  I ask you not to ask it of
others, so that those who are now or have been in the past in the grip
of such an addiction, can still be offered the hope of a path to
redemption and a new and fuller life.

g)  Spewing venomous anti-Semitic hate speech.

h)  Yes.

Which one?  No answer, or changing the subject, will give me a
confirmation of h).  Combining that with Brett Gilliam's report, is all
I need for a journalistically responsible report of h), free of any
moral, ethical, or U.S. legal concerns.

Please let me know.  If you e-mail me directly, rather than with copies
to public forums such as techdiver, I will treat our correspondence as
entirely private.

> Perhaps you  ( and Gilliam , if indeed he really said this) are
> refering to the fact that I am a Director of the House of Hope, the
> largest non-profit drug and alchohol rehab in this country. We also
> treat AIDS patients, like my boy Heseltine's clinic, and we have other
> sections for specific social problems, and operate under many State ,
> Local, and Federal Grants.

Fantastic!  It was Gilliam's speech, not mine, but I do not think the he
was
referring to you as a Director of the House of Hope.   I think that he
was
referring to you (by anonymous quotation) as a reformed cocaine addict.

> Perhaps you also think I am gay, have AIDS,
> am homeless, or am a single mother with children in rehab?

Nope.  The gays already said they do not want you.  I have no idea what
your HIV status is, though I do not know of you fitting into any of the
risk categories.  You can afford a lawyer, so you should be able to
afford a
roof over your head until his bills start arriving (joke).  I assume
that Katherine Van Deusen Irvine is a real person, and that you are
married (otherwise I am sure that your detractors in Florida
correspondents
would have been having a field day.)  I assume that you have no children
- or
rather, I hope that you do not, for their sake.

>  Did he mention that I was a Stephen Minister at Christ Church following
> two years of training in weekly three hour classsroom sessions to be
> able to deal with all kinds of people's problems and get them the
> available help they need? Would you know what to do with a drug addicted
> pedophile whose wife is divorcing him? I do - I deal with shit like
> that.

Wow.  Cool.

Does your hatred for gays, drug users, Jews, divers who do not worship
you,
overweight people, or anyone else ever get in your way as a minister or
pastoral counselor?

>  What do you do for the community, mister "Holocost" Liberal? You
> obviously used the Book of Levi to wrap your schmuck in - go back and
> read it again before you pull crap like this .

I was completely unaware that you were an anti-Semite, until these last
two e-mails.

> It would be
> typical that somebody like you to be involved with this "cause", and it
> would be typical that you would be so desperate yourself as to think
> that taking a shot at the "big guy" will somehow elevate your stature
> from Village Idiot of Techdiver, to something higher up.

No.  What happened was I left the Village for a while, and came back to
find that an Ogre had taken up residence.  (I love fairy tales.)

> Let me asure you it will not. People like me have an intensity and a
> grip on life that those like you will never understand or feel. You
> represent the worst in all of us, and seeing that causes the reaction of
> loathing you get from me and others - it is a glimse into just how awful
> it could be for any of us, and it scares me - just a minor shortage of
> one chemical or another , and I could be just like you.

Are you saying that you have Paranoid Personality Disorder
(http://www.mentalhealth.com/dis/p20-pe01.html)?  You can get help
for this.  Please see your family physician or a psychiatrist.


-- 
Wrolf

Wrolf's Wreck: http://www.concentric.net/~Wrolf

"If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and the
fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy
to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."

  -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, 1927
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