AWESOME SAUCE! “Awkward Black Girl” Star, Sujata Day Joins Us for the SWIRLING San Diego Bash!!

 SirLoinDeBeef Yes I know! Things have changed here a bit. As you know, it's listed in SWIRLING as one of the most swirling-friendly places in the U.S.!

 Law Wanxi Thank you my dear editor. Link inserted. Working on the other request now. ;-) BTW, where have you been?

 Christelyn  

I did two weeks active duty ending last Friday afternoon. I was in the Great American West with dark night skies. It was fun. I did a 100 foot rappel drop, two free falls and got waterboarded as the volunteer subject. That brings my lifetime demo subject for waterboarding up to an even 10 times. 

So, when I say I'd rather be waterboarded than do a First Date, I know what I'm talking about.

 Law Wanxi Whoa! Is waterboarding as awful as libs make it sound?

 Christelyn  Law Wanxi  "got waterboarded as the volunteer subject. "

say what?! o.O

 Christelyn  

No. Nothing is ever as awful as Liberals make it sound. Nor, is anything which hurts people as banal as Liberal apologists make it seem to be. Racial balance in Medical School admissions to make medicine look more like the general USA population? Sounds fair and banal. To achieve this, they'd like to cut admissions of Asians by 2/3 and White admissions by 1/5. Lib response? It's for Justice and Fairness. Might as well as "We're doing this for The Children!" 

As for the waterboarding, well, the first two or three times, it's terrifying, as it is meant to be. That's why it's done. However, the subject, real or demo, HAS to remember TWO things. One, don't panic. Panic is your enemy, not the interrogator. Two, if you have any actual intelligence value, they aren't going to kill you. So all that feeling of drowning and suffocation, the tendency toward asphyxiation, dry drowning or something akin to 'shallow water blackout' is just the result of panic and an inability to breathe normally. If you can stay calm and focused, then from about the fifth time onward, it's just a really bad shampoo at HairMasters. It was a hot day, I was dirty and dusty and I saw it as an opportunity to get cool and at least get my hair and face clean. World-wide, almost no one ever dies from waterboarding, just like almost no one ever dies from free-fall parachute jumps or technical climbing, such as long drop rappelling. OK, I did have a main chute malfunction, but *since I didn't panic*, I released my main chute and deployed my secondary chute. Now I have a cool story to tell my grandchildren I'll probably never have.

Contrast waterboarding with First Date; heck, any date. She's running through her mental checklist, you're running through your mental checklist, you're trying to look for subconscious signals like eye movements and instantaneous facial microexpressions and small, subtle shifts in body language. All at once. And this is not a demonstration; this is real-time, real world actual combat condition. This is not a 'live fire' training exercise. With waterboarding demos, I'm getting paid to do that and any feelings of humiliation or abuse is completely engendered by my own mind. It is not inherently bad; it can be a wholly neutral experience of some breathing difficulty. Dating; not so much. It's still The Job Interview From Hell For A Job You May Not Actually Want. To top it all off, I actually have to pay to do that!

Netflix and a popcorn popper can be your friend. Watch a classic movie instead.