U.S. Embassy, Grosvenor Square, men’s toilet

It was the morning of Wednesday, 7th of November 2012. I had been in London three weeks seeking Asylum on humanitarian grounds, an effort that had unfortunately been stymied. I had made my way to the U.S. Embassy on Grosvenor Square, where it had been arranged for me to receive a repatriation loan, when I found myself engaged in an unusual conversation. Germaphobe that I have become, I was in the toilet washing my hands somewhat vigorously when a well-dressed British gent, who I could only presume an embassy employee spoke: “You’re the first person I’ve met here who speaks English.” Very curious I thought, and while certainly something to consider, I issued a more spontaneous reply: “I’ve just spent three weeks living in the Heathrow Airport.” With an intonation of encouragement, he made then his final comment: “Write about it.” And to this I said: “What would be the more interesting is how exactly I came to be living in the Heathrow Airport.”

A preceding effort: message to William

It was one evening in the summer of 2011 when I wrote a former chum and facebook friend William. We had first become friends in the early 80's by way of a gifted children’s program meeting on Saturdays here in Mobile. And though William’s family later moved to New Orleans, where incidentally he had the good fortune to attend the excellent Benjamin Franklin High School, we remained good friends. Then, in 1987 near the end of my freshman year of college at the University of South Alabama, there was a seminal event when I fell in love with an alluring girl named Jenny. William had by then returned to Mobile to attend Spring Hill College and I recall his bringing by a bottle of champaign on the occasion of Jenny and I leasing our first apartment. This was the summer of ‘87 and all was good, though it wouldn’t last.

As an adult, William has been something of a perennial smartass, but we had nonetheless all been mutual friends in the late 80's and it was plausible that he would possess an understanding and offer encouragement:

August 18, 2011

Frederick Sickman: Whatup Kaiser?

Frederick Sickman: The salient point, though I wish to completely disassociate, is that she was and is an incest victim. And, very apparently, unprecedented trauma has been propagated directly on top of my motherfucking head. I do however at least possess a complete and total understanding. Let her be an Egyptologist, I’m moving to Sweden.

August 19, 2011

William Keleher: Um, what?

Frederick Sickman: First, I had been drinking yesterday when I sent the message and so please forgive the lack of refinement. I will of course explain.

I was referring to my unfortunate and formerly tortuous relationship with Jenny and the fact that, in early 2009, it became perfectly clear to me that she is the victim of childhood incest. Additionally, I am certain that this was by way of her mother’s brother, Gary Holloway. She and I have remained friends over the years and there have been many continuing indications of the incest but my understanding is based principally upon certain confessions she made during 1988 and also an encounter with her uncle Gary at around that same time. I initially found that information very tangential however and it was only after seeing her in Fairhope over Mardi Gras 2009 and then conducting some research into the sequelae typical of childhood incest that the reality and magnitude of the problem became clear. She is however essentially unadmitting still and very evidently these memories remain well suppressed. Her immediate family to include her sister Ginger, but particularly her parents, have also given strong indications that they too have some understanding of the situation which has been suppressed.

These facts have become especially relevant as I have in the years since 1990 been myself victimized by a situation to entail widespread and persistent rumor of the most incendiary kind and with vicious attendant innuendo. Unfortunately, only in early 2008 did this situation become obvious to me. As a comical aside, attached is a copy of an email that I sent to my former colleagues following a resignation from federal employment in late 2007. That employment had been at the Naval Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division (known also as China Lake). However, to be serious, this also serves to indicate the greatly painful nature of the catharsis that has lead to my present degree of understanding.

The essence of this situation to which I refer is that, sometime in late 1990, I must have made a “sex tape” in which I ejaculated into Jenny’s open mouth as she slept. I have however virtually no recollection of such an event and in spite of nearly daily marijuana use at that time, this would be for me still uncharacteristically forgetful. One possible explanation is that the tape had been made under the influence of the benzodiazepine Halcion, which Jenny had acquired around that time from her mother.

The tape would have been made with a Sony 8mm camcorder that I had in fact been successful in shoplifting from Circuit City sometime in the Summer of 1990. However I had no charger for the battery and was only able to operate that camcorder by removing the Sony battery and holding a 9V “transistor” battery to the exposed pins on its rear. Naturally for a camcorder of that vintage, video output was as composite only. And since my then television, a (possibly Zenith) tubed unit lent to me by Tres Costa, had just an RF input, I was able only to watch recordings by way of the camcorder viewfinder. Collectively, the forgoing facts would have made simultaneous masturbation difficult if not impossible and I am certain that I never had cause to view the tape. In fact, I suspect that I had practically no recollection of having made the tape by the next day and so it remained in the camcorder.

These unfortunate events occurred at 6000 Crofton Rd. in Hillsdale where Jenny and I had a shared residence some months following my return from Auburn in early 1990. I am fairly certain that it was a friend of Jenny’s and former tenant of that house, Chad Hahn, who first discovered the tape. Chad was a dedicated prankster, possessed little character, and almost certainly still held an undisclosed key. Also, Chad’s certain use of particular innuendo at that time supports this conclusion. Travis was involved as well by way of soon asking to borrow the camcorder to, ahem, “film his swim team.” This was I believe to effect initial transfers to a more common video format. The then co-conspirators included Chad’s girlfriend Gretchen, now his wife, and of great importance in the sequel, Tres Costa. Very significantly, it is now perfectly evident that Mr. Costa has in the years since shown the stolen tape to a great number of people. As you may agree, it is not a difficult argument that this man has suffered since high school (at least) from pronounced, and presumably undiagnosed, mental illness. His irrational motives were the power that this entailed and, to paraphrase the man, a business model to include poisoning of the competition.

Additionally, my situation has been significantly compounded by two other factors:

1) A racial incident that occurred around 2000 and that has been wildly distorted by the black community. I assure you that this too is a real occurrence and that I am I well able to elaborate. In fact, my own mother is a witness to the said incident. And,

2) Since my government work required initially a nontrivial security clearance and since the nature of that clearance was escalated during the 3-1/2 years that I worked for the organization, it is doubtless that I had during that employment been the subject of an essentially ongoing investigation by the Federal Investigative Services Division (FISD).

Perhaps somewhat incidentally, while working in the China Lake Research Dept., I did have the opportunity to co-author two (distribution unlimited) papers on topics in image processing. This indicates the secretive nature of the work, some of which was indeed done with DARPA funding. Here’s a link to one abstract:

Double Density Complex Wavelet Based Image Cartoon-Texture Decomposition

Certainly upon receipt of my “Plan of Attack” email and beginning possibly with my resignation, the FISD investigation was continued from within the FBI. And although, as would be expected, these investigations were conducted in a clandestine manner, I am absolutely certain of their existence. Unfortunately, the unrelenting federal investigations became over time quite destructive. To appropriately limit the scope of this message, I will defer for now any further discussion of these convolved elements but suffice it that the complex interplay of federal investigation, widespread rumor and innuendo and (counter-racist) assiduous networking within the black community have created for me a living hell. I will cite here just one example in the form of a YouTube video of my nose being mutilated by a dermatologic surgeon in Birmingham:

This occurred in October 2008 and the video was posted in May 2009. Interestingly, the viewing statistics are skewed almost entirely to be in Thailand. I believe my commentary on the video may be instructive.

Finally, following a leave of absence, I am returning this Autumn term to an online program in graduate applied mathematics at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Importantly, I have a potential mentor there, namely Prof. R. Douglas Martin of the Statistics Dept. (adjunct in Finance and Applied Math). He is highly regarded in the finance industry and has founded several software companies to include FinAnalytica and also oversaw the initial development of S+. There is now great momentum with the open source language R and that is a cornerstone of the computational finance programs which are under the auspices of the Applied Math Dept. and which Prof. Martin directs. He knows me well enough and has, quite coincidentally, worked briefly at China Lake, co-authoring a paper (on the radar glint problem) with my former “mentor”, Gary Hewer. So I certainly won’t be sluffing it

My reference to Sweden concerns just that in the future, I may like to find employment in the finance industry in N. Europe. Although there is significant regulation, mathematical finance continues to be important to the region. And too, I have a Nordic woman obsession

Now if can just figure out what in the hell has happened to Manford and engage him in some discussions on the history of economic thought.

Best regards,

Frederick

p.s. Jenny now holds two master’s degrees: Women’s Studies from Alabama and Egyptology from the University of Memphis (in Tennessee). She will be a first year graduate student this year in Art History at Emory. My best estimate is that she was finally informed of the “sex tape” in early 2006.

Gmail — plan of attack

frederick sickman <raumnocken@gmail.com>

Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 12:56 PM

To: batiaandaleeza@sbcglobal.net, thomas.devine@usmc.mil, commonfactors@hushmail.com, jennifer.flenner@navy.mil, pamela.overfelt@navy.mil, info@webgriffin.com, kenney@ece.ucsb.edu, jack.folk@navy.mil, william.spearow@navy.mil, david.brough@navy.mil, jana.keenan@navy.mil, david.kasten@halliburton.com, grant.hanson@navy.mil, silver@math.sunysb.edu, nimahassan@hotmail.com, mitchel.markota@navy.mil, angela.salinas@navy.mil, rhoag@cloudcaptech.com, Andy@hoodtech.com, chester.cornelius@navy.mil, alvin.quintana@navy.mil, michael.wirtz@navy.mil, lois.reed@navy.mil, grace.felix@navy.mil, laserceter@derm90210.com, joel.cash@navy.mil, charles.bechtel@navy.mil, stephen.lyda@navy.mil, gary.hewer@navy.mil

Cc: alan.vannevel@navy.mil, arjuna.flenner@navy.mil, lawrence.peterson@navy.mil, dan.harris@navy.mil, wei.kuo@navy.mil, robert.anderson@navy.mil, jesse.hodges@navy.mil

Bcc: carole.sickman@rehab.alabama.gov, raumnocken@gmail.com

Only since December have I begun to realize that some who signed up for the Ranch Hand program didn’t know they had already met both Agent Orange and his father Nurse Orange Anesthetist even as they had been unduly frustrated with a math problem, had decided it must be 4:20, and then tried to start their own business with funds raised from illegal street racing activities.

I’ve had a change of heart and believe now in the CYA program. Agent Orange is from a family of sociopaths: Agent Orange

I am talking now to the people I used to work for and will be talking next to the people I worked for before that and expect that this will all go well. I believe in the Gestalt theory and I believe the Marine Corps are well able to communicate.

China Lakers: Please also inform Greg Bister and Rick Miller as I am unsure of their emails. And if you haven’t already, someone please remind Alan that he should be rounding up his dogs in order for them to be fixed. His entire kennel is obviously rabid.

Fred Kasten will be able to clarify the 4:20 reference. Who is Fred Kasten?

Mark: Thanks a million.

Gunny: Semper Fidelis.

Charles Bechtel: I hope your offer still stands.

Batia: See you soon ☺

Nima: I can explain.

Angela: How is woody? I think he should be much happier now ☺

Dr. Silver: You had said I looked hunted. Sorry for the transgression ☺

Dr. Flath: As you were ☺

John: Please explain this to your dad. He will understand it is all about SMIBs.

Pam Spearow: How much has this cost the government? Aren’t you due soon for a promotion?

Annika: We all make mistakes ☺ I can explain.

Dave: Thanks for the advice ;)

Charles Kenney: I may have further evidence that Bush is an idiot ☺

Bill Spearow: I have made every effort to settle all disputes at the lowest level ☺

Mitch: Get a grip ☺

Gary: As far as I’m concerned, you are living in purgatory ☹

Please feel free to disseminate and/or make corrections to this distribution but please do not reply. For amplifying information please contact frederick.sickman@gmail.com. Hopefully we can soon talk about something else.

Love greetings and many thanks for your time.

Very respectfully,

Frederick Sickman

Mobile, Alabama

“Creativity is liquified trouble.” — Sydney Pollack in Sketches of Frank Gehry.

p.s. Although I now realize that only very rarely is the time actually 4:20 and while I am no longer interested in starting my own business with funds raised from illegal street racing, I still ascribe to the Roman belief that phallic symbols can be very effective to ward off evil spirits. I had not heard from Agent Orange in some time but he called just this past Tue. night. Unfortunately I was drunk and all I could tell him was that “Quite a lot is (was) up” and that “I have (had) 10,000 inflatable orange ‘devices’ with is name on them.” Wish me luck!

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’ve not yet heard from William.

The incident

This peculiar thing which I call the Negro Spider Laboratory is predicated on my involvement in an unfortunate road rage incident, the occurrence of which I can best date to the summer of 2000. I will describe the incident.

It was early evening when my mother and I were returning home from a visit with my grandparents, traveling from Lenox Gates Apartments in West Mobile to the D’Iberville Apartments in Midtown (important both in the sequel) where we made our residence. As was then my custom, I had embarked on something of a roundabout route.

We were in my mother’s ‘98 Honda Civic hatchback and traveling along Schllinger Rd. when at the intersection of Thomas Rd., just past the Schllinger Rd. Wal-Mart, we were abruptly cut off by the driver of what appeared to be a Nissan Sentra. Along this stretch, Schllinger has now and had then five lanes: two in each direction, and a turn lane. We were in the rightmost northbound lane, traveling at a normal speed, and our headlights were on. As we approached the intersection, the driver of the Sentra launched their car directly into our path and continued on an almost orthogonal trajectory to the leftmost northbound lane, only nearly avoiding collision. Neither before nor since have I seen a driver make such a dramatic Frogger-like maneuver. Absolutely they had seen our car as their driving had been both skillful and deliberate. This was extremely offensive and indeed quite illegal: simultaneous failure to yield and illegal lane change should constitute reckless driving.

I might have taken this in stride. I had by then driven 100's of thousands of miles, this just in urban areas, and well knew to avoid road rage. But then as we pulled up to the first red light (this at Airport Blvd. and being first cars at the light, still in our respective lanes), I looked over to the driver. I suppose I had hoped for some apologetic gesture, but the individual I observed would look only straight ahead and it became clear from her posture that she was having an extreme emotional moment. Indeed, this was an encounter with pure black rage; but I was uninitiated.

Along Schllinger, north of Airport, I somehow decided it would be appropriate to make chase. Though she drove mostly within normal limits and though I followed only at a distance, her subsequent getaway ended quite unfortunately with the driver of the apparent Nissan landing her car in a shallow ditch just in front of the old West’s on East I-65 Service Rd. North. The route, as I remember it, was Schllinger, to Howell’s Ferry Rd., to Moffat Rd, diverting only twice along the way to circle a block. In retrospect, it is doubtless that she had become quite afraid and that only due to the less than sporty nature of her car were her speeds so modest. Her speeds increased however near the end, and I deliberately lagged behind. She turned from Moffat to Western Dr., taking Meadow St. to the I-65 Service Rd. by which time she had disappeared from sight.

As we approached the car, the driver’s door was open and steam was issuing from under the hood. My assessment is that the car’s cooling system had first failed, and then only due to poor visibility had she driven into the shallow ditch. The driver was standing near the driver’s side of the car and there was what appeared to be a Lincoln Town Car already present on the scene, undoubtedly with assistive occupants. As we drove past, it certainly appeared that the driver had incurred no injuries, and as one might expect, she glared intensely. At this point my mother and I might have quite reasonably made our way home, but I was still in something of a state of rage. I made an illegal u-turn just before the intersection with Moffat and as we approached the scene again, this time from the opposing direction, I noticed two well-dressed middle aged black gentlemen standing outside the apparent Town Car. As I brought the Honda to a stop, I reached across and rolled down the passenger side window to issue what must in certain circles be an infamous comment: “Stupid nigger, you shouldn’t have cut me off.” I made then a second illegal u-turn on which finally we continued home. Though at the time it didn’t concern me, very obviously a make had been gotten on the car.

It is important to make the points that I certainly meant no physical harm and that, in all of this, my illegal actions had been just the making of two illegal u-turns.