I know this if off topic but I'm looking into starting my own blog and was wondering what all is needed to get set up? I'm assuming having a blog like yours would cost a pretty penny? I'm not very internet smart so I'm not 100% positive. Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

Sorry for you, Helk.

But this is also what we call "stealing the thread." Joe was good at it.

Your thread everybody. what do you want to talk about? No doubt something doleful and sad... Have at it.

On Saturday I got robbed at gunpoint. I rode my bike down to the grocery store to get some ice cream, you see. The artist lady had some money and I had the energy to ride a bike and thus I went to the store to get some ice cream.

I am mentally handicapped. I am functionally retarded. Seriously, I am. But I know how to make people laugh and I know how to lift heavy things and I can do a bunch of tasks for people and they usually agree that I do a good job. For a retarded person.

Well, I am not mentally handicapped when it comes to reading environments due to the fact that retarded people are everybody's mark. I am a mark, all the time. It is written on my face (when my face is visible).

And that might be part of the problem. You see, sometimes people think I need a haircut. They say, "Jeff, you look crazy man. Your clothes are all torn up, you look homeless." I explain that a person who is intelligent about being functionally retarded wants to look crazy and homeless, because intelligent-looking (smart looking) people are marks. Marks for scorn, ridicule, and robbery.

But I let them (those who argue for straight edges) get me when my guard was down - and they gave me a military haircut. And then on the night of the ice cream ride (last Saturday night) I went out the door looking like some kind of country-clubber. I was wearing nice pressed khaki shorts and a pastel blue button up shirt. All I needed was a sweater tied around my neck. But instead I got a gun to my chest.

"This is a motherfuckin' robbery."

OK. I mean. Fuck. I bought some M&M's and I was going to eat them on the ride home. Also, you see, I had a nice bike, but I gave it away to the female artist. She had and now continues to have a crappy mountain bike.

Well, as a result of the seat being lowered to her height requirement I decided to push the bike up one particularly steep hill. Just one particular hill. Eating the M&M's. And I forgot what I was dressed like.

"Give me all your money."

"I don't have any money, man."

"I said give me all your money."

"I *don't have* any money." I handed over my bike.

He took it. His eyes lit up because I communicated to him that he had won. That I had no desire to chase him, or report him. In fact, I hoped to help him. I hope things get better for him.

"Denial is more than a river in Egypt!" somebody once said to me. I was too pathetic to know what The Nile was. I still don't really know. I mean, river? Is that what it is? A rocky slit in the Earth's crust that fills with water that falls from the sky? That makes sense, right? Water, in the sky, just falling down. Well, I am sorry but ?I am functionally retarded and that makes very little sense to me. Heat, the Sun, water molecules, gaseous envelope inside a magnetic shield; those are fictions, right? No? See, I am stupid and dumb. It is true that water falls from the sky. And smart-looking people, who are also marks, are explaining everything in terms that work for themselves and everybody else.

Did I ever mention my predicament to you? It involves my daughter, an x-wife, and a man who threatened to kill my daughter if I ever tried to contact her. Have I ever explained any of that to you? Of course not. But as a sidebar, let me say it has had something to do with how my lifestyle has evolved.

Dreadly. But she is doing well. She has developed and is, in effect, far better off (in the material sense) than I am. Her step-father, who has not and will not talk to me, will not and has not talked to me. Except to say that if I try to contact her that she would be killed.

If they were hillbilly's I would of course have made adjustments. But he is no hillbilly. At all. And that is what made his threat seem so very real.

Well, at any rate, with my daughter now missing and my x-wife in London, what can I possibly do?

Pray. Of course. God exists, even if invisibly. So I will pray hard and repent for my fell ways.

Yup. But you're not the only one.

I suck.