Happy New Year! Thank you for taking interest in my beyond tired rambling. Am I getting any better at this?

Some inmates talk about Governor Evers touring Waupun and declaring the institution should be converted to single cell housing. The forced cohabitation is more efficient in some regards but invites all sorts of other issues. We shall see if he is successful in that agenda. 

I discover a new movement/stretch that activates the muscles of my back injury. Laying on the floor, on my belly, I look forward so my chin is on the floor and press my shoulders forward to touch them to the floor as well. That pulls on something relevant but to what extent it might be helpful I cannot say. 

Fuck you, 2023. 

The guard clacked the baton about midnight loud enough to wake me. I would complain but my back keeps me far from comfortable enough to fall asleep again. Always tired. Every day I am allowed to request use of a phone I ask to be scheduled at 3:00pm and try to use the phone at the end of range 3 whenever possible. My kids are done with school by 3 and it is my little prayer or superstitious ritual that I will be allowed to talk to my trifecta of happiness again soon. Why loss and grief compel the appeal to supernatural?

No rec today. The rumor of 14-17 new guards is countered by the rumors that some were sent to help out an understaffed Waupun prison and that the expected attendance here at Boscobel called in sick which leaves them short staffed. The "needs of the institution" is to pretend to be sick for extended holidays so inmates are deprived recreation? My back isn't having the best day anyway.

Maybe I should survey the range to find out how many guys holiday or seasonal depression spirals into suicide when they are treated worse than unwanted dogs. My general impression is that people in prison don't necessarily do anything worse than the judges, prosecutors, or prison/jail staff, ethically. But it is more like a puppy mill to exploit tax payers by selling false reassurances of "safety" or "good." Heinous criminals are few and far in between. Most guys in prison need more involvement in their daily choices to prevent the behavior branded criminal. Substance abuse that becomes chemical dependency is one of the greatest evils at the foundation of a lot of negative behavior though. The ugly desperation it creates is still a culture shock to me. 

I got an hour of legal access this morning. I hate having to ask another inmate for help searching information in legal access. I am forced to divulge things in my searches I don't prefer to share with inmates. Especially after the misinformant at my trial.

We get chased out of legal access after an hour and the other inmate is complaining that they pretend we cannot get recreation but four guards are just standing around outside the control cage doing nothing. That is just for this housing unit. I tell him that there is probably four more in each housing unit and HSU, and the control room. With "needs of the institution" being any possible means to sit around to soak up a paycheck by doing nothing. I am fairly comfortable with that, honestly. Taxpayers might not be, but if they aren't tossing my cell and trying to grief me then I will withhold complaints. 

The guy a few cells up from mine has had his cell tossed five times in the last two weeks. They told him they "must have forgotten to log it" when he complained about the repeated searches. He even had a guard promise to log it after the second last search. With guys in a vomited to exhaustion and drug cocktail induced stupor I expect they are going to break rules to get away with some extra searching. I guess they even vacuum out the drains when they do the more invasive searches. Locking guys in a box without a tv, radio, or books might yield in some substance abuse. I already commented on escapism. The prison imposes the greatest possible conditions to encourage escapism but only provides drugs to guys which get binged and mixed. I feel like all inmates should be accommodated culturally appropriate escapism of radio and TV, at least. The addicts will still look to dose themself, but any help reducing that pressure seems like the "right" thing to do, in my opinion. Unfortunately the people that believe in the institutions role to grief through restrictions and deprivation wouldn't realize any satisfaction from that. They must be so happy we don't even get recreation, legal access, family access, or privacy to any sensible quantity.

I dreamt about my daughter being tiny as a bunny rabbit and living in a tiny house where I would lay down and talk to her through a big window. Actually not stalker-ish, but I know someone will try to spin it that way. My boys were also sitting and jumping on my back to go on a ride like I would pretend to be a horse. It was a short dream though. Most are when you struggle for even a few hours of sleep.

When the guard chased the other inmates and I out of the library he had slammed the lever handle of the door down in what I would guess was a playful attempt to startle us to which I commented about having a weak heart and he replied "more like a broken heart." I can't imagine wha the might base that on aside from his impression of what was broadcast from the trial. Guards usually play ignorant of inmates charges or convictions but there are subtle indications they know about more than they pretend. Especially with so much time to stand around in groups and chat. It reminds me of the guard saying "that's Anderson" to another guard after I arrived at Boscobel. The other arrivals weren't identified to the other guard, at the time. I don't mind them knowing who I am as long as they don't harass me. 

Merry Christmas! Consuming ultra processed foods do not generate the hormones that make you feel full. Junk food doesn't satiate. Engineered food causes metabolic disease? My journal is going to be all about NPR shows if they keep broadcasting gems like this. Ultra processed people. Food that isn't food. Industrial produced edible substances. Heh. Maybe that is why I only get satiated when I eat fish or oatmeal while in jail and prison. The food is sub-par. My family raised me on real food. For that, I am thankful. 

My grandma, my dad's mother, traditionally makes lasagna for Christmas. The same household that started me on pickled herring. 

When my brothers and I were small our parents were young and didn't have much money. They were separated and we lived with our mother. Somehow we ended up on the Toys for Tots charity list. An ambulance came to the house one Christmas with a Santa Claus, camera man, and a few other people I presumed to be EMTs. Actually I thought they were firefighters at the time. I was immediately suspicious and did not like the invasion of strangers in our home. I told the man dressed up as Santa that I did not believe him to be Santa and he challenged me to pull on his beard to verify. I did grab his beard to check but he was not expecting me to lift my feet off the floor. Turns out, the beard was real but a real beard doesn't make a real Santa Claus. Not paying a visit in tow by flying Reindeer? Kick rocks. Get back in the ambulance and roll out. We got a bunch of toys we didn't ask for but had fun playing with for a day. I remember my mom bouncing on some ball with a platform ringed around it. I don't remember what it was called but there were a few good memories from the experience. 

At our maternal grandparents house, later on, I was horrified to see we were on the news because of the Santa visit. I would have told them to keep the toys had I known they would put us on the news to feel good about themselves. The best part of that Christmas was our mom was happy and playing with us. The toys didn't matter. I don't value Christmas presents much. Christmas is about spending time with my family. 

Today is great. For certain reasons, twice as gr8 as other days. And every day after even greater. Even thought I cannot see the Great Light of the Night Sky my heart doesn't lose sight. Not crying today is a fight. I cry less often now than a few years ago. And just so, I lose that battle once again.

The shower only runs for 9 minutes, not fifteen. I lather up a wash rag before I even start the shower. I don't mind although I miss a long hot shower. 

When the guard comes by with my mouthwash at evening med-pass I wish him a Merry Christmas before tipping the little cup to swish the small amount I use each day. He shakes his head and wishes me a Merry Christmas and adds a comment about how I don't fit in here. It is an obvious compliment because of my courtesy. 

Now that I am done expecting guards to visit my door I am going to go heave some tears onto a pillow. Aquatherapy. 

My back finally let go. It didn't have me gasping for air and grunting like my worst cases of whiplash but I could get a normal stretch out of it this morning. Now it just hurts "like normal." My usual nuisance. Aside from eye fatigue, my headache is currently gone too. I have been avoiding milk entirely and only able to do so because of the food my family sent. Soon I will run out but right now I feel so much better. I am also not plagued with the itchy scaling dandruff on my scalp and under my eyebrows and whiskers. There is definitely something to eating the right type of food. My body loves fish and eggs and oatmeal. Milk it does not. And hot dogs and turkey ham are just nauseating. 

Ready for more unrevised rambling? A "trustee" (inmate worker) was convicted of ambushing and raping women in a cemetery. Younger and smaller inmates (people) tend to "look up to" the older and larger inmates (people). One of the young guys on the unit begins exploring the same sort of considerations or fantasies for himself. He explains in detail how he would ambush the only example of women we get to see; female guards (there are nurses too if you can be swindled out of $7.50 to go see one). His details include waiting outside the prison at shift change, catching her at a gas station or following her home which he supposes proximate to Boscobel, and "putting her in the trunk." Skipping the specific sex acts, she ends up pregnant in his fantasy. As a trustee, the cemetery rapist passes through the hallway most days. It seems to initiate the fantasies of the young inmate who repeatedly expounds his emulation. I told him I was disgusted with him and that he should shut the fuck up. 

Prison is an environment where those sorts of stories are usually met with someone's interest and approval. It is these sorts of interactions that saturate inmates time together of story telling and exaggerations to provide the interest, excitement and approval of their peers. Prison seems like the bet way to assure future criminality of impressionable minds. Prison experience assumes the burdens on society will be greater in the future by destroying the future prospects of inmates and limiting the positive sanctions inmates experience to gross malvictories of the desperate.

I set up my radio and listen to "The Shepherd" on NPR. It is a Christmas story they have adopted as tradition for the last 44 years. 

Winter Solstice! The darkest days...aren't the coldest days. Another sleepless night and day. At rec this afternoon, a guy caught an elbow playing basketball and it drew blood. We got stood against the wall while at least two "white shirt" supervisors, eight regular corrections officers, and four nurses stood around chatting while one of the nurses wrapped the inmates head like he just had brain surgery. The guy was sitting down and everyone was perfectly calm before any staff responded.

All staff respond to all incidents. Even at Dodge, they all came out in the main corridor to stand around and gossip when I went to the hole. It continues to amaze me how little they have to do but still fail to provide things to inmates. More phone calls, more rec, more legal access, more food, more books, or whatever else. By enlarge it appears like a very do nothing job. One inmate joked about the misuse of taxpayer dollars and how the staff do note care unless they are irritated and want to harass inmates which will always get worse until a lawsuit stops them, but even then they don't care because it is still just taxpayer dollars. The last part seemed especially true; they don't care because it is still just taxpayer dollars. "It is becoming an issue" is the "needs of the institution" verbiage they use to perpetrate a lot of maltreatment or harassment.

​They caught guys bringing the plastic garbage cans for their rooms out to dump then and exchanging them with drugs hidden in the bottom. Now we aren't allowed to dispose of garbage or even set it out of our cells. I don't feel like that is any sort of harassment. That is a legitimate security interest, in my opinion.