Who remembers these?

[RTP2003]

Hi Bobby, how's the bird?   Nice to see you've put your deductive powers to this one, we can all sleep a little sounder now, knowing that we are safe from the threat of "pussy anon" posters.

Personally, I didn't know you before, during, or after Straight.  I have no idea who the fuck you are or what the fuck you look like.  Other than this board, and perhaps  passing references to your posts, made during conversations with others from this board, I don't know a goddamn thing about you.  For some of the fun you've had to endure at the hands of certain parties who shall remain nameless (in fear that I may invoke their presence, I'm superstitious like that), both on these boards and in your real life, you have my sympathies.  For any drama you've brought on yourself, well, you're a big boy and can handle it.

Now I can't claim to be impartial in this teapot full of tempestuousness that you guys seem so determined to keep stirring, after all, I am friends with "Anne Bonny" (and the earlier monker is from the Spanish for "Isle of Bones, Key West, Bobby, not the REM song "Cayahoga", which is about someplace in Ohio.  Points off for the mistake, but hey, no one's perfect, right Chief?), I know her ex-husband from Straight, I've met her kids for chrissakes, and I can tell you that she is a really cool person who has aided and abetted me in numerous times of crisis.  She did a hell of a job raising two daughters under conditions that made that task even more of a pain in the ass that it normally would be (whatever the hell "normal" child-rearing is).  That aside, yeah, maybe she does react in a kneejerk fashion responding to some of your posts, but the self-congratulatory tone of many of your posts do, on occasion, strike one as kind of pompous or arrogant, as if maybe you were somehow cooler or less affected by Straight than others were.   I know that that reaction has been expressed by a couple of people other than the suspected anon poster that your oh so incredible Sherlock Holmes-like detective prowess has identified.   I'm sure this is a mistaken perception, and I am also sure that whatever static between you and Anne is a result of some of the shit you have said about and to her on this board on previous occasions.  Whatever.  That shit seems to me to exist mainly inside your head, from my limited understanding of it, and it is possible I am wrong, but it sure smells that way from where I stand.

Anyway, that's my two cents on the topic.  It'd be nice if you guys could drop it, but whatever.  You're still welcome to get high with me (or not) when I dance on Miller Newton's grave.

[85 Day Jerk]

Well, all I can say is thank you for clearing some things up.  You have said more about who and what you are in this one post, than in all the posts of yours that I have read in the past 2 years.  I congradulate you on that, really.  All this time I thought you were someone else that came into the program at the old Morgan Yacht Building around October of '78.  My apologys, for thinking that.

There are VAST differences between the Straight Program in the early years, and in the program that ensued after the introduction of Miller Newton.  I am really just beginning to see some of the differences and how it affected people.  I wanna thank you RTP for sort of blasting open a vault hidden away in my memory.

Get this people.........  Helen Petermann, George Ross, Scotty Cassidy, Jim Hartz, Laura Morgan, and several others all pulled away from the Straight Incorporated program following the Board of Directors decision to place Dr. Miller Newton as Executive Director of the Gandy Blvd Facility.  All of these people had operated for YEARS with impunity to the various forms of abuse that had gone on in the program.  They had set the stage, talked the talk and walked the walk.  I was a part of all the shit that made the meat and potatos of the program.   What I want to know is what the fuck happened?  I really did not have much to do with the Gandy Building other than attend the 7 stepper meetings and even then it got to the point where we all would show up in the parking lot, decide what movie to go see, and split.  We all knew Miller was a fucking dick, but what the fuck were we supposed to do about it?  We were just young adults, most of us still living at home with our parents.  I do remember the one time I came into group after work one day.  That building had way shittier ventalation than the ones I had been in.  The structure was built to be meant for air-conditioning, and without it, the fucking B.O. was goddamn incredible.  I had come there as a favor to the hated William Rollins and Carrie Heapner to help in a rap.  I think it was a Wednesday sometime in the fall of 1980.  I remember coming into the lobby and then being led into the Staff Office where Carrie, William and I had a brief reunion and discussed what the topic of the rap would be.
William left and went in to Big Group to warm them up for the "special treat" of my being there and Carrie sort of briefed me on how to act and what not to say and shit like that.  She looked a lot older without braces, but shit, she still must have only been 16 or so and here she was Junior Staff.  She led me into group down the girls side which was on the left of the door if I remember right, and when I got to the front where William was it all hit me.  The funk was unbearable.  It had been over a year and a half since I had ever been in Big Group.  The kids were all clapping and shit, but my head started swimming from the goddamn smell of fear and desperation that permeated from the very walls.  I pushed past William and ran for the nearest door holding my hand over my mouth.  One of the 5th phase guys at the door used to drop off at my house as a newcomer and since he could see I was ready to throw up, he had enough sense to open the door and stand aside.

I vomitted all over the bushes outside until I was on my knees dry heaving.  All I remember of my last vision was seeing Kathy Wynn sitting on front row.  The look on her face was too much for me to handle.  Two months earlier she had been recently 7 stepped and arguing with her dad at a special "parent's meeting" that Newton had cooked up for us.  She had been free, and now she was a caged animal.  It was fucked up.  I guess now, looking back on it, that she had been one of the first "7 Step Refresher's" in the history of the program.  Such a thing would have never happened in my program.  If you fucked up, that was it, no more contact with anyone from the program.  Since the program was all we knew, most of us Old School people were not willing to risk being left out in the cold with no friends at all.  Fucking Miller Newton was all about money.  Why else would they take someone back?  Holy fucking shit............ Kathy Wynn went on to become staff.  So did Kim Hyde, Jim Sailor, one of them Kune pricks, and if I remember correctly, most of them had fucked up and been put back on refreshers.  THE NEW STRAIGHT WAS RUN BY A BUNCH OF FUCK-UPS!!!!!  Them assholes went through all that shit, fuckin graduated, were stupid enough to get caught fucking up again by their parents, went BACK through the shit a SECOND time around, became staff members because they were too fucking stupid to even flip burgers, and you poor 2nd Generation Straightlings had to endure their wrath.  It's all starting to come together now.  I hope Wes Fager don't read this because he'll probably have a fuckin brain anuerism!  Thank you RTP whoever you are, I don't think you realize how much this means.

[RTP2003]

Your memory of these events is impressive, and you seem to have developed a pretty decent writing style, and I think I kind of get the gist of what you are saying regarding Straight pre-Newton.  What I find a little unsettling, shall we say, is that you seem to think , and please correct me if I am wrong her, that Straight was a good thing made  bad by Miller Newton.  I tend to disagree.  My thinking on the subject is that Straight was a BAD idea made even worse[/b] by Miller Newton.  I think the very model of the "therapeutic community", group culture, stepcult-containing, and involuntary treatment is useless at best, and most likely extremely damaging.  Straight was all of these things and much, much worse by the time Miller Newton attended his first Open Meeting.  True, he made it even more hellish in his crazed campaign to satisfy his sick needs and sinister desires, but it was fucked-up from the get-go.  There is no way in Hell you can persuade me that Straight was anything but abusive and destructive from it's inception.  Like I said before, it wasn't a good thing made bad by Miller Newton, it was a bad thing made even worse.

[Froderik]

A good analogy might be how the Nazi party grew out of the generally fucked-up climate in Germany at the time..

In which case Newton would be likened unto Hitler...

[85 Day Jerk]

Alright then, now we are getting somewhere.  I have stated before, that I finally bought the program hook, line, and sinker.  I had no choice people.  My family situation was very complicated at best even for those like Woof, who actually knew me and were there at the same time I was.

When I entered the program I was Bob Newman.  During open meetings a heavy-set woman with a soft whiny voice, glasses and brown hair would stand up with the microphone and speak to me in a pressured voice and spout out "program speech" to me, then sit down.  That was my mother, Florence Newman.  Later on in the meeting, a barrel chested man would stand up from another part of the parents side and speak to me in a Military tone of voice and call me things like "Sad Sack" or "Yo-Yo" and berate me for my lack of progress.  This man closely resembled the country singer Freddy Fender.  This was my birth father, Charles R. Patterson who would usually be flanked by Mike Patterson's red haired mother who resembled Barbara Feldon of the old spy spoof Get Smart, good old agent 99.  Hardly anyone noticed this for well over 6 months which brings up a good point about how fucking useless Open Meetings were as a whole.  

Seriously, half the group thought I lived with a single mom, and the other half thought that my mom had red hair, my brother had red hair and freckles, looked like Huckleberry Finn, and that I was just a freak of nature or some shit for looking completely different with brown hair and green eyes.

Once Executive Staff realized that my mother was not "program material" and that even having just one newcomer would be shaky at best, it was decided behind my back that I was to go and live with my estranged father whom I had never ever lived with up until that point.  My father was sucked into the program because Michael was so desperate to get high all the time that he had started huffing toluene straight outta the chemical barrels from a nearby storage yard.  His mother Carole wore the pants in the family, my father was pussy whipped, and when it all came down to it, I'dd be damned if Mike and Scott both got cars after high school and shit and I am left in Largo with a foodstamp mom and nothing. ( My parents divorced in '63 and dad married Mike & Scott's mom in 1974)  The whole family situation was like a dirty little secret once my mom got fed up with the bullshit and pulled away from the program shortly after I got Second Phase.  My choices were to either live in poverty with no chance for a future, commit a terrible crime, get locked up and finish out as a ward of the State, or go live with my dad and "Get with the Program."  I chose to 'get with the program' but I made it as difficult on the Staff as I possibly could.  My living with him enabled Staff to fully utilize my father's National Guard training and our home was turned into a fortress where escape was highly unlikely.
We housed an average of 5 newcomers at all times while only having two clients actively in the program.  Because of work schedules, we also were a highly valuable weekend drop off located near both US 19 and I-275.  This made me pretty much untouchable to punishment by the staff.  I did a lot of shit that deserved a refresher while on my program, yet would only get stood up and lightly admonished.  Like the one time Dave Crock singled me out in a 4th phase rap for not agressively confronting lower phases and asked me point blank, "What are you, a pussy?"
To which I replied, "I don't think it would be morally right for me to hone in on your job, Dave."  Less than 2 weeks later, I was on 5th phase.  Go figure.  I was only on 5th phase for 27 days, and yes, I was actually interviewed by Helen Petermann for a position on Staff, but I politely turned her down.  I hope this covers most of the "Mystery of the 85 Day Jerk."  Thanks for reading.

[Woof-a-Doof]

What I find a little unsettling, shall we say, is that you seem to think , and please correct me if I am wrong her, that Straight was a good thing made  bad by Miller Newton.  I tend to disagree.  My thinking on the subject is that Straight was a BAD idea made even worse[/b] by Miller Newton.

Yeah, I think ya got it...not speaking  for 85DJ....but for myself. Straight Inc sucked long before Miller Newton came into the picture. The seeds (no pun) of fear, distrust, hoplessness, hate, anger and rage (to many things to list) were all sown and propagating nicely  when he arrived. So when Miller got there, there was already a seething bed of anquish and agony on which he could cultivate his evil. Someone mentioned germany's prime condition which allowed Hitler to take over as he did is a perfect example!

In regard to Bob's reign of 85 days being a "jerk" (which is what folks were called back then) he truley was the most unpredictble, unruley "jerk" at the time. The classic moments when he would yelp out "Guys Medication" and 1/4 of the group would stand and walk to the rear of the room...left staff scratching thier heads and most of us others being "jerks' in gut cramping laughter. There was another time he stood and perfectly, verbatium recieted "Bohemian Rhapsody...no one made an attempt to stop him....everyone was simply stunned.

Bob had a defense mechanisim back then....simply be crazy...consistantly...and no one got close to him.

[Sam Kinison]

My first week,Chris Cassler was returning to 4th Phase after being put back on 3rd phase for copying his newcomer's MI's.This is important to mention because as so many villify(maybe correctly)Chris for his involvement in the Sarasota program,he many ways he was in the same boat we were.Doug Hemminger was on first phase.Liz Cassidy(Gay)was a staff trainee.Dave and Cynthia Crock were both on Senior Staff but not yet married.
                      Aimee Wright and Mike Murphy were both on Junior Staff.Wanda Minton participated in my intake while on a 3rd phase refresher(talking about a great first impression!)along with Jimmy Cassidy.Interesting note,nobody paid monthly,it was something $800 for the entire program.There wasn't any fifth phase yet.Let's say the group was a lot tougher in those days,many kids being there right out of juvie on court order.
                      Straight was barely thirteen months old.As an interview with a former trustee board member mentioned,that was the time when Straight changed their "Modus Operandi".Their target market became a lot more upscale,they were admitting kids who were a lot less at risk than the kids in previous months.Many original board members resigned at this time.The program changed from an alternative to JDC and State School for at risk juveniles to a facility designed to exploit the fears and frustrations of naive,sometimes blindfolded, parents of middle class and wealthier families.This was about four months before Woof entered the facility.Helen Peterman was running amok all over that warehouse across from the Milton Roy Building.The average graduate took eight months to finish.This was beginning to change.They were sstill boasting that no graduate from Straight had returned to using.When that changed so did everything.
                      I guess thay figured that we weren't being brainwashed enough.They created the fifth phase.Fourth phase was lasting an eternity for some kids.Being called a "woodwork fourth phaser" wasn't that uncommon.Undefined goals,biased opinions of unqualified staff and rampant paranoia were the norms.One of my life's biggest regrets are not talking about pulling myself to my parents going into my senior year in high school,because I found out years later that they would have gone along with it.

[Antigen]

I think that maybe this here guest person who so cleverly uses the quote feature, yet can't be bothered to actually write anything original or thought provoking, but just quote my own words and manipulate them into a clever little patchwork piece of shit to have mommy Ginger tack up on the refrigerator otherwise known to all as fornits would benefit from attending some goddamn writing classes.

What? Hey, leave me the fuck out of this. I ain't been among the coolio in crowd around here since... never, prolly always was a bad joke.

[Froderik]

What? Hey, leave me the fuck out of this.

 :rofl:  :rofl:  :rofl:

[Anonymous]

Stupid fucking cunt is finally figuring it out.

[Anonymous]

Stupid fucking cunt is finally figuring it out.

Oh what, that we can't stand her droopy-dog bullshit dragging everyone around her down?

[85 Day Jerk]

Whoh, hold on Ginger.  I simply meant that anon posters who hide behind the feature tack their bullshit on your refrigerator (Fornits) for all to see like a kid who cuts a few pictures from magazines and shit, glues them to construction paper, and acts like they really accomplished something.  I am sure this behavior is carried out in kindergartens across the nation on a weekly basis.  I was just drawing the comparison is all. I am sorry.  I did not know that your name was a registered trademark.

I did'nt take the time to fully go into it, because I did not feel it necessary, yet once again, the all important anonymous feature has turned a serious thread that has actually brought back some really cool people from obscurity into yet another overflowing toilet.
In a kindergarten class, there are many children who actually have gifted talent, but if I were a child, and saw that a heartfelt drawing of mine had to take a backseat to manipulative little assholes who wanna be teachers pet, I would never pick up a fuckin crayon ever again.  There is that plain enough?  

In closing, I would like to state the personal observation that the anonymous feature has only led to ONE new poster since November of 2006. Correct me if I am wrong........ PLEASE!!!, yet it has allowed for countless backstabbing, demeaning, pussyass, threatening and degrading comments to go unchecked.

I have a solution.  It is pretty bizarre, but piss me off and that's what ya get.  If someone wants to be anonymous, fine, but the board should assign their punk ass a goddamn Avatar, same as the rest of us.  By the board assigning a random avatar, the rest of us would at least have a fleeting chance to tell where some of this shit is coming from, when it is of a repetative nature and it would cut down on the disruptiveness in general.

[Froderik]

Hmm, anons..  to be or not to be.. I don't know.. whatever.

Perhaps start a thread on Web Forum Hosting to address that? This would at least preserve what's left of this thread....

PS I've gotta wonder who'd post something like that about Ginger...

[Ursus]

In closing, I would like to state the personal observation that the anonymous feature has only led to ONE new poster since November of 2006. Correct me if I am wrong........ PLEASE!!!, yet it has allowed for countless backstabbing, demeaning, pussyass, threatening and degrading comments to go unchecked.

Heeeeyyy.... In defense of Anons, I should say that I posted for MONTHS before I took the leap to avatar.  The option of posting as Anon is super important in the healing process.  For myself, I had a lot of paranoia to get over.  Not everyone is up to being ID'd, so to speak, as a "bonafide entity".  Some people are still sorting out where they stand vis-a-vie their experiences, and would prefer to do that out of the limelight.

Sure, you get a lot of slag.  But it gets drowned out, hopefully, by the real deal.  And I can't help but get the impression that no small amount of the back-stabbing commentary from the peanut gallery is actually an attempt to get their worst fears and personal pain validated from those stronger than they in this point in time...

[Antigen]

Hey thanks, Ursus. That's sort of my thinking on it. No matter how detached and objective you may try to be, there's power in a name. That's why trolling is so much fun sometimes.

Bob, sorry but I'm with the peanut gallery on this one. I only have two choices in this; I can either control the conversation by trying (and failing sometimes) to prevent certain types of content or keep certain types of people out or I can not try to control it at all, beyond whatever influence I might have in discussion, just like everybody else.

Asif we all haven't had this conversation a million fucking times. Bob, sometimes you're the biggest, smelliest, most flatulent asshole in the room. Sometimes I get pms or emails from people insisting that somebody (oh who, who, somebody, you see) ought to reel you in, get you to have a seat and shut the fuck up. Should I do that? No? You want your freedom and you figgure anybody who can't let it roll off is just a pussy crying for mommy's protection?

Yeah, me too.

We're not in group anymore, there is no coc, no 5th phaser is going to write you up, you can cry all you want for protection from the mean ol'e bad ol'e anon boogiemen. In fact, I think you should write to the moderator of this here particular forum and complain loudly, be persistent and insistent and demand protection from the snotty little anon bastards!

El Niño, heh, yeah... wonder who I've gone and pissed off now? Oh well, I hope they're more entertaining than litigious. I miss Nazi sometimes.