The justice has been explaining his positions publicly more and more, and even delving into some thorny issues, like torture.

“I don’t like torture,” Scalia says. “Although defining it is going to be a nice trick. But who’s in favor of it? Nobody. And we have a law against torture. But if the - everything that is hateful and odious is not covered by some provision of the Constitution,” he says.

“If someone’s in custody, as in Abu Ghraib, and they are brutalized by a law enforcement person, if you listen to the expression ‘cruel and unusual punishment,’ doesn’t that apply?” Stahl asks.

“No, No,” Scalia replies.

“Cruel and unusual punishment?” Stahl asks.

“To the contrary,” Scalia says. “Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don’t think so.”

“Well, I think if you are in custody, and you have a policeman who’s taken you into custody…,” Stahl says.

“And you say he’s punishing you?” Scalia asks.

“Sure,” Stahl replies.

“What’s he punishing you for? You punish somebody…,” Scalia says.

“Well because he assumes you, one, either committed a crime…or that you know something that he wants to know,” Stahl says.

“It’s the latter. And when he’s hurting you in order to get information from you…you don’t say he’s punishing you. What’s he punishing you for? He’s trying to extract…,” Scalia says.

“Because he thinks you are a terrorist and he’s going to beat the you-know-what out of you…,” Stahl replies.

“Anyway, that’s my view,” Scalia says. “And it happens to be correct.”

Scalia is one scary, scary man, and he’s going to be a Supreme Court Justice for a very, very long time … unfortunately.

After having completed an hour in the Box Room, thrown out one large trash bag of pure junk and a stack of empty small appliance boxes, I now have two large canvas bags full of sewing notions, a small box of college memorabilia and paper ephemera I can’t part with, and a box started of things I am going to pass on to others. I also saw a section of floor that hasn’t been seen in years.

I have decided that an hour on any given day is enough. Too much more, and I would wear myself out and get sick of dealing with it. Stop when you are still in a positive mood and optimistic, I say. It felt good to get done what I did. I might have thrown out some more actual trash (like empty boxes), but the bin is full and won’t be empty again until tomorrow. It was a good time to stop anyway.

Later, I am going to open the bedroom closet and put the sewing and craft notions away with the rest of my stash. Maybe I’ll even be inspired to do another hour in the Box Room, even though I don’t have anywhere to toss anymore trash today. It’s not like it’s messy trash, so it could sit in some corner until tomorrow when the bin is empty again.

I feel good. I feel inspired. I can conquer the insanity of the Box Room! Really … I think I can! One hour at a time!

The cats have been going out of their tiny little minds since I opened that door. That room is the great unknown to them. Uncharted and unexplored territory. That’s the way it has to stay for a while, until things are under control in there. But since there wasn’t any way for me to actually go through things in the room with the door closed, I had to leave the door open and sit in the hall. Yes, the cats were most interested, not only in what was behind that mysterious door, but also in all the new things they had never seen before being pulled out of boxes and stacked around the hall. Yes … very, very interested. Currently, they are tearing around the house like two wild things, likely peeved because the door is now closed, and there’s no new stuff sitting around to rummage through. They will just have to wait until tomorrow for more free entertainment.

I can’t believe I actually started on the Box Room and even made a very small dent in the stacks of junk. Go me!

I should probably go try to get some sleep now, but I seriously need to reset my body clock. I may try to stay awake as long as I can so I will go to sleep at a somewhat normal hour tonight. I can’t work on the Box Room while Lin is sleeping, so it would be very helpful to be on a daytime schedule again. Maybe I could even get more than one hour done a day.

If I am going to try to stay awake, I better go plan an easy dinner right now. If I have to use my brain to make dinner after being awake forever, we will starve to death or eat peanut butter on crackers, which Lin will not accept as a proper meal. I don’t know what I am going to make, but it better use leftover taco meat, because I have some. Chili maybe? Guess it’s time to go poke around in the kitchen and have some caffeine while I am at it. Coffee on the porch sounds so good right now.

It’s a beautiful morning!

I am impatiently waiting for Lin to leave for work. As soon as he is gone, I am going into the Box Room. I haven’t had any sleep, I am hormonal and grumpy, and yet, I am going to go into the Box Room. I don’t expect to get much actual work done today, but at least I can take full stock of the situation and formulate a plan. Maybe I can even get rid of some of the peripheral junk that could just be tossed or given away. Who knows?

What I do know is that I am going into the Box Room today and I am going to force myself to deal with at least one small thing in there. Find a place for it in the house, toss it in the trash, or give it away. I’m going to get started on this enormous pile of junk, because it’s embarrassing that we have been living here almost five years, and we still have a room full of boxes.

God give me strength and protect me from avalanches.

I’m going to take photos, but I don’t know if I will post them or not. Maybe I’ll wait until it looks much better before showing you the enormity and horror of my predicament.

Are you able to scream? At all? For any reason?

I don’t mean get mad and yell at someone. I mean let out a loud and alarming scream … out of real fear or for fun or on rollercoasters.

Though there have been times in my life, when letting out some sort of scream would have been the very thing any average human would do, I didn’t. I do not have an automatic scream even under sudden and extreme stress conditions. I do have an automatic full intake of breath and a quick trigger on the adrenalin and everything becomes crystal clear. I have an excellent fight-or-flight response, which leans heavily toward flight … due to my small size and structure. But no screams. Ever.

I don’t even scream in my nightmares, and I do sometimes have awful nightmares in which I would like to scream, but nope … can’t scream. Or just don’t. React just like I do when I am awake.

This wasn’t a learned skill. It is one of my innate traits. It’s pure instinct. It doesn’t seem normal not to have some sort of scream involved though. Don’t most people have some sort of loud scream-like sound they make when they are freaked right the hell out?

I’ve always wondered if maybe it was because I just hadn’t found anything worthy of screaming, but then I consider some of the things I have seen and experienced, and that can’t possibly be true. There were a few scream-worthy things.

Just a weird and lofty thought at 3 am, because I am feeling some strange kind of stress and can’t sleep. I should really be asleep.

Dinner was different tonight. It’s the first time I made these! They were very tasty.

Take that Freebirds! No more do I have to drive to your location and pay you ridiculous amounts of money for ridiculous sized burritos!

So I don’t lose these links at Delicious, where I send links and never see them again … plans for making home wind turbines for energy production.

Build a Model Turbine: Ride the Wind!

A Home Power Plant - Wind Power Generator