Allow me to revel in this, the official post election gloating period.

To add something I only just realized while I was making lunch :

The best thing about this election is that in order for the Conservatives to have any power whatsoever, they will have to work with the Liberals and compromise.

And we all know they are way too emotionally immature for that. Toddlers that they are, they will demand to have everything their way or they’ll pitch a fit.

Well go ahead. Pitch a fit. Hell, slap that shit onto pay-per-view. I’d pay good money to watch you little burnt butt bitches wail because you’re not getting everything you want.

Carney knows that Jagmeet Singh will be a whole lot more reasonable.

So thanks, Dumb Donnie. By threatening Canada, you insured that Canada will have a thoroughly left wing government for the foreseeable future.

Go ahead, keeping talking that “51st state” crap.

We’ll be a socialist democracy by Christmas.

On the CBC they said people were saying that Carney has “big daddy energy” and they are not wrong.

He seems like exactly the sort of serious, stable, no-nonsense, principled guy I want to be dealing with that tempestuous toddler Trump.

I’m betting he knows that the only way to deal with brats is to tackle them firmly and not let up until they behave. Make it clear that this is not an argument or a negotiation, no matter what they say or do. The only way out is to do what you want them to do.

Be as solid and unyielding as a mountainside.

But the moment they behave, be as warm as a sunbeam. Make the difference between you when they misbehave and you when they behave as stark and plain as possible.

You’d be surprised at how well behaved your little hellion can be when that’s the only way they can get the sun to come out.

And Canada has an advantage in that kind of situation because we don’t actually wish the USA any harm. Even though we’re pretty upset with their government right now, we definitely don’t blame the American people for what it’s doing and saying.

So we can take the “this is for your own good” position with a clear conscience.

One fear I have is that the one thing the Liberals and the Conservatives will be able to agree on is “fuck the NDP” and so Jagmeet Singh won’t matter at all.

I hope that won’t prove to be the case. And I have faith that the basic babyishness of the current crop of so called Conservatives will keep that from happening.

But as a hardcore leftist, I will wait and see how the Carney government actually acts. If they turn out to be a bunch of cowardly corporate centrists uninterested in making any serious changes to the status quo, I will be deeply disappointed.

And pretty pissed off.

And the worst part is that they’ll still be able to say, “Well, we’re better than the alternative, right?” and they’ll be right because that is how god damn low the bar set bu the Conservatives has gotten.

As long as you are a marginally competent adult who can regulate their own emotions and resist the urge to soil yourself, you are light years ahead of them.

And that leads to very, very underwhelming liberals like Chuck Schumer. The entire boomer “old guard” of Democrats are proving to be entirely unable to meet the challenge of our times.

Except for Bernie, of course. He’s been training for his whole life for this!

Time to clear out the DINO-saurs.

More after the break.

---

Meanwhile, back at me

I am doing OK.

But there are things that are beginning to worry me.

For example, I have this rash on the outside of both upper legs. On my hips, more or less, and just below them.

It’s quite extensive and looks pretty bad. I thought it was just wounds from the jagged metal spikes that jut up from the surface of my bed (and you know they’re real because I’m not a fakir) but then I realized they are a) evenly spaced b) itchy and c) on both sides, though more on the left than the right, and that suggested it was a rash.

From what or where, I dunno.

And it’s been there for more than a month, with me, and my childlike attitude towards life. ignoring them because they don’t hurt and they don’t get in the way of my life and so to my dumb numb self they aren’t a problem.

But um, I should probably get that looked at.

Skin anomalies of all kinds are a red flag in diabetes.

Also, I have started to worry about just how much “clicking” my joints do. The number of times a day I have to jerk-flex a joint that’s gone stiff so it will go click and loosen up again seems to be getting higher.

And it’s affecting more joints, too.

It makes me feel like I’m the Tin Man and my joints keep rusting in place so that I have to “work” them to get them moving again.

That’s probably an age related thing but that doesn’t mean it’s not a medical issue.

Should probably talk to someone about that, too.

Which means I should probably make an appointment to talk to my GP, Doctor Chao, about these things. They’re neither an emergency nor urgent, so I would not take them to the ER or UC. Ergo, GP.

I should try to arrange a Zoom type meeting so I can show the doc the rash.

I know it won’t be an in person appointment because those take forever to get. I don’t think he even sees people in his office every work day.

Covid was just the excuse doctors needed to get even lazier.

But as a person with an undiagnosed condition crippling his legs, I might be biased.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Well, for me it is, anyhow.

This should explain that mysterious and provocative statement :

As you can imagine, not being able to vote today due to my disability has me pretty pissed off. They managed to accommodate me in the previous election, dammit.

But I get the feeling they are not nearly as well organized this time.

How very sad.

I’ve been looking forward to voting against Pierre Poliwannacracker for weeks now, and looking forward to voting for Carney almost as long.

He seems like a very solid dude and I completely trust him to deal with Trump. He has the appropriate level of disdain for the “man”. He knows that you can’t deal with Trump like he’s a reasonable adult human being.

You have to school him like the toddler he is. And that means being firm, direct, and unwavering in your convictions.

And being willing to correct Trump as many times as it takes for him to actually start paying attention to what you’re saying.

If only to make the situation end sooner.

And it means abandoning all respect for him. That’s something the American media seem unable to do. They continue to cling desperately to the idea that he’s not as bad as he seems and that he has some sort of master strategy, even if it’s an evil one.

But no. He’s just an idiot.

His people, sadly, have a plan, and it’s to destroy America. The true underbelly of the Republican party has finally stopped pretending that they ever liked freedom and democracy and they are eager to follow Hitler’s playbook in getting rid of literally everything America has ever stood for because they’re such “patriots”.

Where’s Captain America when you need him? Or Superman.

Luckily, enough of them actually do believe in America to be having drastic second thoughts about that Trump fella.

I read on Bluesky that articles of impeachment have officially been filed. Good. I am dying to know how exactly the Republicans are going to defend Trump from the literally dozens of impeachable offenses he can be charged with.

How typically Canadian of me to be discussing American politics on Election Day.

The most important thing is to force as many Republicans in the House and Senate to defend Trump’s actions as much as possible.

That’s more important than if he’s actually removed from office. Sure, that’s definitely the best outcome, but that’s not going to happen unless you can really rattle his Republican robots in Congress into thinking that if they don’t turn on Trump, the people will turn on them.

It is within our power to turn Trump into pure political poison.

Let’s do that.

I mean, who would even represent him if he did get impeached and thus had to be defended in the “court” of Congress?

Certainly nobody competent. He hates people like that. Competent people might tell him no, and toddler that he is, he doesn’t think anyone should ever be able to tell him no.

That’s the essential through line of his entire pathology : nobody has the right to ever tell him no about anything.

After all, if they say no, that comes dangerously close to the idea that it is possible for him to ever be wrong about something.

And that’s just not true. It isn’t, it isn’t, it ISN’T!

And he has made himself into the patron saint of people who can’t ever ever EVER admit that they have ever been wrong about literally anything.

And that’s why they keep supporting him. Because to stop supporting him would mean they had been wrong about something.

And they would rather see America burn than admit that.

Imagine going through your whole life thinking you’ve never been wrong.

Imagine the feeling of power when your realize that this means that you can make things true just by saying them.

Explains a lot, doesn’t it?

More after the break.

---

Peeling back the layers

So I have made progress on the whole applying to the Onion thing.

I’m hoping to finish up tomorrow.

I have the resume done, more or less. It certainly won’t be the most impressive resume they have ever received but I guarantee it will be the funniest.

I’ve decided that for this application, I am just going to let my zany nature run wild. Jokes tucked in everywhere to show off my wacky wit. A general atmosphere of comedic intent and wild, anything can happen, devil may care merriment.

I’m trying to be funny, is what am saying. And cute.

I’m pretty good at both of those.

And what the hell, I can live with the risk of coming on way too strong or otherwise being just a tad too much.

I gotta be me, after all.

One thing that bothers me about the application form is that I don’t see anywhere to submit my 30 headlines.

I assume they’re on the next page of the form or whatever. I am eager to submit them as I am rather proud of them.

And I haven’t even given them their final revising yet!

Or their first one, for that matter.

What can I say, I’m lazy.

Anyhow, I have the resume done and tomorrow I will seriously get down to making those headlines as funny as I possibly can.

Which should be novel. I rarely do that. I just write whatever and shove it out the door.

But I really, really want this job and so I am going to slow my creativity down long enough to stick with a thing and try to make it as amazing as I can.

Historically, doing that makes me depressed. Once I’m done writing something I don’t want to see it any more. I’m off to the next thing.

But I will go into revision knowing this and thus with my nerves steeled and a sense of grim purpose as my armor.

It may not be my favorite part of writing, but this time, it has to be done.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

So this problem was on my mind today, so I talked about it.

Having the game you’ve been very much enjoying playing start crashing consistently is really hard on the nerves.

Having it happen even after you turn the graphics settings down to their absolute minimum is just plain depressing.

I have a couple more ideas, but like I say in the vid, I may have to face the fact that I just can’t play Rogue Trader until I get a better power supply unit, or PSU.

Which would be a serious bummer, man

Because I really am enjoying the game quite a bit. The highly unique setting took some getting used to, but it’s basically science fiction with some magic involved in the mechanics of things, so it wasn’t too big of a stretch.

And the game has a very strong and unique art style, which honestly gets to be a bit much at times.

But such trivia aside, it’s a great game and I am very invested in the plot and the battle system and so on. .

So having to stop playing now would seriously suck.

But my nerves can’t take making progress five minutes at a time. Especially now that I have started a big battle with what appears to be some asshole in elaborate power armor doing the usual, “You thought I was dead, but now it is you who will die!” thing.

I could have a lot of fun with a character who’s an old, jaded, tired superhero.

“Look, let me save us both some trouble. You want to destroy the world as revenge against all the people who never took you seriously and now you want to make them pay. That sound about right?”

“Um… yeah. Look, I have this whole speech prepared. Can I deliver it anyway?

“Sure… knock yourself out. ”

I totally imagine him as being played or voiced by Bruce Campbell.

Anyhow, it would be one thing if the crashes just left me on my desktop. That would be aggravating AF but I could tolerate it.

But no, I have to do an ice cold reboot every time.

I used to only have to do a lukewarm reboot, where all I had to do was press the reset button atop my computer case.

But now when I do that, the computer reboots but the internet is fucked. So now I have to actually turn the power off at the power supply, wait a few seconds, then hit the power button to boot up again.

At least that works, knock on wood. I would be absolutely lost without the internet.

Well, I’d be shopping for a new computer, if that’s what it took.

If I can’t play Rogue Trader for a while, I will have to find something new to me but old enough not the make the computer access the GPU at all.

That’s getting increasingly difficult. My taste in video games keep shrinking over time and at the same time I have played most of the games in my genre of choice, RPGs.

Or as they are apparently calling them now, CRPGs, which stands for, believe it or not, frigging COMPUTER RPGs.

As opposed to what, ones inscribed on papyrus? It’s a genre of video games. That pretty much guarantees that a computer is involved on some level.

What they mean by that, I surmise, is that it’s a computer STYLE RPG, like the turn based epics I enjoy, as oppose to an ARPG, which stands for Action RPG, where you are physically present in the game world and have to fight in realtime, like in games like the Zelda series or Skyrim or Kingdoms of Amalur.

I like those too, though slightly less as I get older.

Anyhow, I’ve played most of the top CRPGs of the past now, so I really have to scrounge around to find something I want to play.

I don’t want to go back to playing Tyranny. That game’s depressing.

There’s got to be something I have played yet. Or would play again.

More after the break.

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The Unemployed Man

I probably should wait and do a video on this instead but what the hell, my muse is very powerful but it is not patient.

Warn the affiliates we may be going late.

To be an unemployed man is to feel worthless. Society judges a man by what he earns and/or produces and if you’re an unemployed man you make absolutely nothing.

Now raise that to the power of being not just unemployed but unemployable because you are handicapped. That means you do not have the hope of ever attaining any worth. You are nothing but a drain on society and that’s all you will ever be.

And that creates a dark and terrible shame within you that no amount of reassurance from loved ones or society can dislodge.

I speak from experience.

Patient readers know that I have a massive sense of shame about having been so unproductive for my entire life. It’s gotten a little better over time but it is still a thick, dark cloud in whose shadow I shiver and freeze.

Story of my life, really. Feeling shame for things I can do nothing about.

And there is no way out of that mess except to find work somehow. And the elephantine weight of the shame I carry does not make that easy. Most of the time I don’t feel like I am capable of doing much at all besides the same ol’ unsatisfactory bullshit.

Just spinning my wheels and waiting to die.

That deadly shame is the real monster in my head that chases me everywhere I go and forces me to hide like a mob informant for fear of being found out.

God, how badly I want to stop fearing the dreadful moment when someone asks me what I do for a living.

Nothing. I do nothing. I do nothing, I make nothing, I add nothing, and I’m worth nothing.

On all levels I am nothing but a liability.

And knowing that’s not true does not keep me from feeling that way.

I need a deprogrammer.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

That’s how I am feeling at the moment.

I talk about it here :

Hey, it could work. Every time I talk about going to the ER or UC it ends up just being dehydration and I get better once I get enough water in me.

That’s part of why I haven’t escalated to a full on red alert yet. Right now I am, as usual, closely monitoring myself so that I can see if it all goes away or gets worse.

God, I hope it doesn’t get worse.

Oh, right, before I forget : I am also experiencing muscle aches, runny nose, and that weird ache that goes all the way from my lungs to my ear canals.

Again, believe it or not, that could all be dehydration.

My life is so fucked up.

The runny nose is probably just my seasonal allergies kicking in. Heck, my whole pathology of the moment could be traced back to a body wide inflammatory response to some god damn pollen or other allergen.

Why do we even need histamines, anyway? I know I looked that up a while back and the answers was something about ways your body sends chemical signals and thus communicates with itself, but I’m not satisfied with that answer.

We need to teach our cells to write teeny tiny Post-it notes.

What bugs me is how fast I can dehydrate. I can go from adequately moistened to practically a powder in a matter of hours.

And that makes me feel like I have to drink water constantly just to stay alive. Like all those episodes of Flipper I watched where they were transporting Flipper to wherever he was needed by helicopter and the main characters kept sponging water over him so his skin didn’t dry out.

Man that show was contrived. I mean, if you thought the stuff they had to come up with so that Aquaman could use his powers in the Superfriends was contrived, at least Aquaman could survive out of the water.

But it had animals AND helicopters so I loved it as a kid.

Once more I briefly flirt with the idea of living life with a hydration IV and a freaking urinary catheter in just so I could be sure to stay hydrated.

Then I wouldn’t have to get up nearly as much, and that sounds like a bad thing now that I have typed it out.

I mean, I’m already practically sessile. If it wasn’t for getting up to empty my pee receptacle and refill my water glass I would be one jumbo pack of adult diapers away from never moving at all.

That would be the ultimate oral-retentive dream/nightmare. The sort of Twilight Zone “careful what you wish for” dream from which you wake up screaming, drenched in sweat, not simply because it was horrifying but also because part of you found it so very, very appealing.

Great, I have successfully creeped myself out.

Deep breaths. Find my center. Remind myself that I want to live, not merely survive, now and that means that said nightmare is not in my future.

Not by choice, anyhow.

Oh, by the way, I have now hydrated a fair bit and it has, indeed, made me feel somewhat better. The symptoms remain but their severity is diminished.

So I don’t know what to think. I will hydrate further and see how things turn out. It might be just a side effect of my body adjusting to the warmer weather.

Eventually the afternoon will become my enemy and I will really have to hydrate constantly or end up heat sick.

Maybe this is the year I get one of those portable AC units.

More after the break.

---

Another epic journey

From here to the kitchen and back! Tally ho!

And when in the kitchen, I didst microwave a Michelina’s (fettucine Alfredo, classic) and makes myself some garlic cheese toast while I was at it.

And yes, it continues to be sad (and upsetting if I think about it too much) how much such a simple act takes out of me.

On the other hand, I am merely winded and a little sore, and that’s not so bad. That just means I got a little bit of exercise, and that’s a good thing.

Part of freeing myself up inside has to be learning to accept that a certain amount of effort is not just good for me in the long term, it can be good for me right away in terms of relieving stress and muscular tension.

And that feels good, and who needs another reason to do something that feels good?

It’s just a matter of convincing myself that the effort will be worth it. That reward will fully justify and even exceed effort.

And that goes against one of depression’s favorite lies, which is that nothing is ever worth what it costs and that therefore all you can do is do as little as possible.

But nobody truly believes it or they would be catatonic. All they would do is lie there and stare at the wall all day, every day.

Clearly on some level there are things they consider to be worth the effort, even if they’re just mundane things like eating and using the bathroom.

Generally speaking, we at least serve whatever our addiction is. Food, masturbation/porn, video games, birdwatching.

One of the secret keys to unlocking depression is realizing that life gets a lot easier if you just give your body what it wants.

And when you do that, your body will reward you will pleasure. And it won’t even feel like effort, the effort actually comes from restraining your body from doing what it is meant to do.

I’m not saying that will make everything feel like golden sunshine all the time but it will release a lot of tension. Tension you didn’t even know you had.

Doesn’t that sounds good?

Hmmm. I wonder how much I could make off a book called, “The Hedonist’s Diet”…

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Today, I talked about whether or not I suffer from SAD.

I certainly feel more perky and cheerful now that the sun is out.

And this is a golden time of year for me because we have sunshine but it’s not too hot out yet. That’s perfect for a polar bear like myself.

So I will try to arrange some outside time for myself. I know it won’t be easy to convince myself to really do it. The scared little animal in me still wants to remain hidden and not be noticed and always retreat to the position of least fear.

That’s the real definition of safety that the anxiety to depression continuum runs on. You can only feel “safe” when nothing is triggering your flight or freeze responses.

And they are so very, very sensitive. And heavily prone to hallucinations.

I was talking about that with my therapist, Doctor Costin, this morning. About the relationship between anxiety and depression, and how he thinks that I don’t suffer from major depressive disorder. Instead, he thinks the main issue is anxiety, and I agree.

The theory gets pretty complicated at this point. I mean, for instance, you could debate endlessly which came first, the anxiety or the depression. Blah blah blah.

All I know is that it’s not depression that has kept me in suspended animation for three decades. It’s fear. Anxiety. An anxiety so pervasive that it makes even dealing with the mundane aspects of everyday reality seem fraught with peril because that constant drumbeat of terror makes it so hard to think.

Adrenaline is a harsh mistress. It makes you dumb because it pushes you to use the fast circuit of the brain which only cares about the immediate moment and does its best to empty your mind of everything else.

Anyhow, I’m an anxious dude who manages to hide it from others by spending most of his time alone in his room on this effing computer. The rest of the time, I am with at least one friend and only going places I am super familiar with, like the living room, Wound Care at the CCC, and of course Denny’s.

I can’t think of the last time I went anywhere new. And that makes me sad.

Not SAD. Just sad.

Well I am going to change all that. I am ready to go looking for excitement and a big part of that will be trying new things and going new places.

We need variety and variance in our lives. We can’t afford to let things become so routine and predictable that our nervous system just tunes them out and we end up feeling like the world around us isn’t even real. Nor are we.

So I am going to shake things up a bit. Try to find work on FlexJobs. Polish up those Onion headlines and send them in. Try once more to make friends with Discord.

Yadda yadda yadda.

All in all, I am trying to be more hopeful and it seems to be working. The sunshine seems to have perked me up and made it easier to be positive and for that I am grateful because I have been sans hope for a long long time.

Well, no more. I am looking around, looking up, and looking forward to things. For once in my life, I can view the future as something other than a blank grey horror.

I am sure that this world has a place for me, someplace where I can shine.

And if it doesn’t, I’ll make one.

More after the break.

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Various irons in the fire

So let’s see…

I have the tab with the Onion job in it. That’s the big shiny prize in my life right now. I honestly think I would kick ass at a job like that.

Even if it meant moving to Chicago. Not that I am at all eager to be a foreign national in Trump’s America. Not a great thing to be.

But at least I’m Canadian, so I blend in.

And Chicago isn’t super far from New Jersey, where my sister Anne lives with her husband Dean and various and assorted cats. So that could be a fallback position.

Hmmm. According to Microsoft Co-Pilot, it’s 12K km or 806 miles. 12 hours road time.

Maybe not such an easy escape route after all.

In another tab I have this thing, which is an open call for animation scripts.

And I did take Writing for Animation at VFS, so I am slightly qualified for it. Plus, of course, I would love to see my words turned into animation.

Then there is Substack, which seems to be structured to be a subscription based newsletter platform but whether you charge people to subscribe is up to you.

A lot of people don’t. I think I could only get away with that if I started writing classic serial stories with cliffhanger endings.

How do they survive? Subscribe to find out! Mua ha ha.

And I have a couple of tabs relating to AI image and/or video generation. There’s exciting new stuff out there but it requires being a touch more technical than I am capable of being and so I am waffling on whether it’s worth it to me.

I will probably get a furry friend or two to help.

Like I said to a friend of mine today, I am not a “do it yourself” guy as I am a “let someone else do it while you sit there and look cute” guy. 🙂

I know my strengths. Competence is not one of them. Between the dyspraxia and the mind fog and the generally not being mentally present in the world, dealing with the realities of existence is not my forte.

Makes me wish I was better suited to coding. I could bypass all my coordination issues by developing technical skills.

But I don’t swing that way at all.

I have to find my own kind of path. One where my amazing intellect and creativity and wit and so forth can really shine.

I’ll figure it out eventually.

I’m working on it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I wanted to do something other than the usual talking head blah blah today, so I decided to push myself a little and poke fun at the style of a certain YouTube channel.

Et comme ca :

And I like how silly and goofy and high density it turned out. It was fun to make and definitely not my usual blathering on so that’s a good thing.

But I wish I had come up with more gags. I wanted there to be a minute’s worth and there was only like 32 seconds. Lame.

They are some jam packed seconds, but still.

I wonder how jam became the standard unit for how packed something is.

I assume it refers to the act of jamming things in and not the fruit spread.

But my brain just ran out of gas. This is something to remember for my potential future career as a comedy writer for The Onion. Even I can just plain run out of ideas.

Makes me ponder a return to my caffeine drinking ways. There would definitely be times when my daily buttload of Onion content would be due and I would be running on empty and I would need to recharge pronto.

That’s the thing about the dream of doing what you love for a living.

Will you still love it when it becomes work? When you have to do it whether you feel like it or not? When you have to do it the way someone else wants you to do it rather than just expressing yourself when and how you feel like it because that’s what pays the bills? Is this dream of yours really worth it?

There is a strong argument to be made that people should keep what they love to do and what they are paid to do entirely separate. That way they can keep the thing they love to do pristine and unsullied by extrinsic concerns.

I honestly think that the whole “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” idea, while well intentioned, has caused a lot of pain and suffering in people who go into an endeavor with that dream in mind only to discover the harsh reality that for most people, most of the time, it just doesn’t work out that way.

It’s not impossible that if you work extremely hard that your natural talent and luck will be enough to get you to that magic place where you somehow are getting paid to do exactly what you want to do, no more and no less.

But it’s not bloody likely.

Even globe spanning super rich authors like Stephen King have had to write what the publisher wanted instead of what they wanted to write.

And yet, there is still nothing keeping you from making whatever art is inside you except for the dream of somehow harnessing your talent to make a living without killing it.

Work some dumb McJob like the bohemians of old just to pay the bills and then do your art when you get home at night.

And make peace with the fact that your art may never make you any money. The market may completely fail to assign it any value. You may never get anything from your art except personal satisfaction.

That is why it is so important to focus on the art you have the most fun making. That way, you will get rewarded for your art immediately.

And, of course, if you enjoy making it, you will make a lot of it, and that means you will get better and better at it.

So fuck trying to please the market and its gatekeepers. Just keep having fun. You don’t need to be paid to do it any more than a kid needs to be paid to play Xbox.

If the money comes, great. But if not, that’s okay too.

Because you already got rewarded for doing it.

Everything else is gravy.

More after the break.

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The 8:30 pm attack

Lately, it seems like I have an allergy attack at around 8:30 pm every night.

Usually not a big one, as these things go. Thank God, I haven’t had a really major attack in decades. Now, I get like a half dozen sneezes at most.

But it does remind me of my oft repeated but never heeded admonishment to myself to get the heck back onto to antihistamines so I can avoid not just the sneezes but the whole body wide inflammatory effect.

I get the feeling that said effect has inobvious effects all through my body, possibly including my IBS and other gut symptoms.

Food for thought, one might say.

Or not. You do you.

Today’s been the same ol’ same old. I am glad I mixed things up somewhat with today’s vid. That made things a bit more exciting.

I am still getting used to the idea of looking for excitement. I spent so many years wrapped up in the clammy comfort of my semi-somnolent state that the very notion of seeking to raise my adrenaline level would have seemed beyond insane.

But I’m awake now, and alive, and I am aiming to stay that way, at least some of the time. I am no longer willing to stay half-dead just to make doing nothing in particular more comfortable and relaxed.

I wanna do stuff, god damn it. I have all this magic inside me and it’s straining to get out. I want to show the world just how god damned amazing I am.

After all, the world needs me!

Someone’s got to talk some sense into the masses. I see so much in the world that cries out for my particular POV and insights.

At the very least I could make useful contributions to the discourse. Get people examining their assumptions, like a good little trickster.

And, not to put too fine a point on it, make some freaking money.

I have a lot of unmet needs.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I wrote this as a sample for an AI program to use to make a video.

I thought it was pretty good, so I am preserving it here.

File it under the further adventures of my gay hardboiled detective.

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It was a hot thick drizzle that slid down the window pane in obscenely bloated drops and clung to the underside of anything horizontal as if daring gravity to try to make it drip onto the greasy pavement below.

It was the kind of hot, wet weather that makes you feel like you’re too large an animal in too small a cage and even the slightest of annoyances make you want to yowl like a baying hound at anyone or anything daring to come near.

The city was on edge. So was I. It often works out that way, somehow.

And that’s when he came in. Impossibly and immaculately beautiful, like something painted on a church ceiling by an exceptionally homosexual Renaissance artist. There was a otherworldly freshness and untouchability about him like he wasn’t really here with us in this filthy old world but just appearing to us in a vision to warn us about the latest candidate for American ‘s Top Messiah. He was blonde, and beautiful, and softly feminine like a lamb or a fawn.

In other words, he was exactly my type. And that made me suspicious.

Time for a month that sucks.

I thought I’d complain about it in the day’s video because you lovely readers are probably sick of me writing the same old stuff every time this happens.

You know, this sucks, unfair, easy to fix, crazy to expect us to live for five weeks on what normally only has to last four, and so on.

It’s all in the vid.

Hopefully I will get some $$$ for my birthday. That would help a lot.

Of course, being the prudent type, I’m not gonna spend like I usually do assuming that I will get enough money to pay for that final week.

That would just be silly.

But I did spend like usual in this last week because it didn’t occur to me to check whether it was a five week month until yesterday.

They sneak up on me. It’s like they come along just at the moment when I have finally let down my guard after the last one.

What I really should do is go through the whole list of deposit days for the year to identify these five week fuckers so I can plan ahead or at least so they don’t come as a shock each god damned time.

I crunched the numbers and I am not in too bad a shape. I got $150/week or so to live on, which covers my stable expenses.

1 trip to Denny’s, $30. Two McDonald’s runs, $40. Groceries, $70. 30 + 40 + 70 = 140, leaving me with a whopping $10 in leeway.

Time to paint the town red! Woo hoo! Bonanza!

I have a small problem : I have two days to cover and only one entrée. I did my grocery budgeting last week assuming I would be ordering in tonight and as I probably shouldn’t order in at all this month that leaves me in a bit of a pickle.

So I might end up ordering in tonight anyway, but with a real eye for value. Maybe look for a good high yield two for one deal so I can cover a meal for Friday night as well and thus avoid one McD’s run.

My clever foxy brain is working on it. I can play with the numbers and make it all work out. Trust me.

Otherwise, things are going fine. I continue to try to get the gas giant that is my cold and bloated soul to ignite into the big shiny star it’s supposed to be.

I feel like I’ve hard partial ignition. Didn’t last long as the flame didn’t really “catch” but I am sure that I am on the right track and it’s only a matter of time.

Heck, maybe I’ll get the Onion job and my life will be transformed. I’ll be able to rent a house and decorate it and pay someone to keep it clean and maybe invite the occasional gentleman caller over to dally with me in the drawing room.

And then fuck me up the ass.

I was reading the job listing and it mentioned “being familiar with the Onion editorial process”, so I decided to look up just what the heck that meant.

Basically, quantity. All the writers are expected to produce a lot of everything – story pitches, headlines, full stories, video ideas, and so on.

And I was like, HELL yeah. Demand much of me and WATCH ME GO. I will blow your god damned socks off.

I sure as fuck wouldn’t want a job where I am only expected to do a little. I’ve not been developing my writing muscles through blogging for all these years to just submit one little story a week or something.

Pretty sure they wouldn’t be paying me $100K CDN/year for that either.

So the mystery of how they can be so sharp and funny all the time is solved : they have an enormous amount amount of all kinds of inputs and from there they choose the best stuff and presumably combine, refine, polish, and so on in order to create the incredibly high standard of satire for which they are known.

And I could one day be a part of that.

They’d be fools not to hire me!

More after the break.

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I ordered in

I probably shouldn’t have, but I did.

Got myself some lamb shawarma from Uncle Sal’s Shawarma and so far it tastes great. Has that “grilled” taste I love so much.

For some reason, I like slightly singed food.

And it is, of course, lamb. If lamb is an option, I get lamb, 99 time out of 100. There is just something about sheep meat that makes my soul happy.

Eh, it fell apart. Probably my fault. Uncle Sal is blameless.

But if I get this again, I am going to make sure I have a clean, empty bowl handy in case this happens again,

Right now my shawarma wrap is in a bowl all right, but it lies atop a layer of trail mix left over from my lunch. And I am eating it with a spoon.

Such are the small indignities of life.

Otherwise today has been typical. Video games, meals, video, blogging.

Another day ticks by while I sleepwalk through life.

Actually, that’s not fair.

Sleepwalkers actually get somewhere.

But I am, in my own intermittent way, striving to change that. When I find myself in a moment when I can push against the walls of my enclosure, I do.

And for the rest of the time, I lie there, plotting my escape, and saving up the energy for my next big push.

Big changes are coming. Transformational ones. Ones that will finally unmoor this barnacle existence of mine and let me find a real place in the world.

Maybe it will be the Onion. Maybe not. Maybe I need to get back to the world of freelance writing. Get myself a cheap smartphone so I can sign up for UpWork or the like again and get myself out there.

I would be so much more sane if I could earn money.

And I know it’s possible.

It’s just a matter of making myself do it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I am still just a..

Thought I would vent some of my life frustrations today in order to :

a) Let out some of the steam so I can face my problems more calmly, and
b) Make them more “real” by putting them out into the world where I can’t just suppress them all over again

It’s called “externalization” and it can serve many purposes.

On the face of it, finding remote work for myself does not seem like the craziest idea in the world. I’m sharp, I’m resourceful, I am hardworking, I am determined. There’s all kinds of remote work type jobs I could do.

So as is usually the case with me, the barriers are 90 percent internal. It’s that classic problem of mine that I don’t want to face the maelstrom of possibilities and options and potential risks and hazards of the world in order to pursue that goal.

And I know that’s mostly madness. I mean yeah, on some level, that means choices have to made from all the stuff the internet has to offer, but there’s nothing wrong with just going with whatever tops the Google search and giving it a try to see how that works out, and if it doesn’t work out, I just try the next one.

All of that is perfectly sensible and logical and in many ways obvious but that doesn’t keep that scared little animal inside of me from scrabbling at the walls trying to get away from the idea.

Because I know it’s going to hurt. Busting out of this cage is going to require a degree of self-overcoming that cannot help but be very painful and that scared little animal (SLA? Nah. ) is, of course, afraid of that.

But pain is just pain. It sucks but then it’s over and you got what you wanted and stopped letting a very temporary sensation keep you from getting it.

Avoiding pain at all costs is not only childish, it’s life-destroying. Being a grownup means understanding that sometimes the pain is worth it. Some deals are genuinely worth making. Sometimes the reward really does justify the effort.

And in order to find those sufficiently rewarding things, you have to be willing to try stuff that might not pay out.

That’s why it’s best to do all your trying stuff when you are young and energetic and resilient. But the next best time to do it is now because you will only get less capable of it as you get older.

Easier said than done, I know. Consider it a stretch goal. Something to reach for.

I feel like I still have a lot of stored trauma and deferred life-grief and despair at my situation to work through. A lot of my psyche is still invested in this hypnotic loop I have been in for 30 years and that part does not want to have to wake up and activate and deal with reality any more than it already does.

Which is, of course, as little as possible.

So it’s a slow but inevitable process of blooming as a person. I will apply for that Onion job and go looking for other opportunities and slowly I will open the door of my cold dark vault and let the sunlight and the pure waters and the sweet smelling breeze into my life and my soul.

I am not filth. And I can be clean. The filth is just something that has happened to me over time and I can shake it off like a husky shaking off snow when I want to.

Underneath it all I am a shining, wonderful, scintillating star who can’t wait to finally get up out of the mud to climb into the sky and shine for everybody.

But first my light has to burn away all the sick miasmic fog clinging to me.

And that will take some time.

Go, sunbeam, go!

More after the break.

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Burn, burn, burn

Of course, shining stars don’t just shine. They also burn.

And that’s how I feel lately. Like the raging fires within me are finally rising to the surface of my soul and burning all that accumulated mulch and gunk away.

And that does hurt, though maybe not as much as you’d think. The fire does burn but it also cleans and purifies, and that feels great, so the net pain is not so bad.

And I am actively stoking that blessed flame. I want it to burn hotter and hotter until it bursts free of my funky grotto and burns all my limitations away and sends my demons and my ghosts screaming into incinerated oblivion.

You know. If that’s an option.

And it is.

I’m still “learning to fly”.

That is, learning to transcend the limitations of what reality decides to give me in order to simply give myself sufficient buoyancy to stay out of the depths and establish a minimum mood level that allows for hope no matter what.

But reality is a hard habit to break. I have spent too long taking cold, concrete, cruel comfort in not being “deluded” and focusing solely on what I “knew to be real” for me to have any level of comfort with leaving that logical, provable, “sensible” world behind.

At some point in the process, I will have to accept as real that which I cannot prove or deduce or verify to be real, and that seems impossible.

Maybe it is. Maybe I am too old to learn faith now.

But I have to try. It’s my best bet for replacing that piece of me that has been broken all these years. For closing that gaping wound at my core, the one so deep that at times I can feel a cold hard wind blowing through it.

Reality can help. If I improve my life so that I am not so locked into this hypnotic loop of mine, that will help shrink the wound or at least remove impediments to its healing.

But I know in my soul that it will take more than that to actually close that damned wound. And merely intellectually accepting the need for faith does nothing.

It will take being willing and able to believe it to be closed without needed to justify or explain why or how to really complete the healing process.

Believing in things unseen. Denying the need for evidence and proof in order to preserve belief. The power to make something true by believing in it.

That’s what faith is, and I am finally learning that it is not optional.

Even people who have angrily rejected the faith they were raised in and consider themselves to be total atheists still retain that all important seed of faith within them that closes the gap in their soul that people like me fall through to our doom.

There are worse things than believing things that are not “true”.

But it’s not going to be easy to get myself to accept that.

I’m working on it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

First, here’s today’s vid.

My friends have already heard this story but it’s too good not to share with the world.

I swear to God that really happened. I had been listening to those ladies converse because as it turns out, the conversations of stupid people can be quite fascinating in a sort of psycholinguistic way.

Like, what nonlinear thought processes led to that conclusion? How did we get from the previous subject to this one? How does one communicate despite a limited IQ?

Because no matter how poor a student you were or how much you struggle to deal with the complexities of modern life, there’s still a certain amount of information you have to somehow get across.

Even just to socialize.

Anyhow, that’s not the important thing today. The important thing is that after I made the video above and uploaded it to YouTube, I then uploaded it to TikTok too.

And that was painless enough that I then uploaded a bunch more of my vids to it. Not all of them, not yet, but a whole bunch of them.

So I have done it. I have put my stuff out there on TikTok where the people who follow me there can take a gander.

And let me tell you, TikTok is sooooo much easier to use on Windows then on a stupid Android tablet screen.

On Windows I can just make the vid and upload it. On tablet it was way more of a pain in the ass, and as for editing it after recording it, forget about it.

There’s a video editing program for mobile devices the kids use called Cap… something but I tried and tried to learn to use it and it was just too different from what I am used to for it to make a lick of sense to my old brain.

Too much to unlearn!

I mean, there is a reason I paid $80 for the video editing suite I actually like. With it, I can do all kinds of stuff.

I currently only use it for simple linear editing, but I know how to do more.

I was especially sure to upload my political provocateur stuff to TikTok in the cheerful but probably vain hope that I will stir shit up and maybe even provoke a bunch of nimrods into launching reams of incoherent vitriol at me.

What fun that would be!

Yeah, I know I’m weird. And possibly a tad psychotic.

But in some ways this is my very weird way of trying to get the other kids to play with me on my terms. Grappling with others verbally and challenging their opinions and making them think about what they believe and why while dodging their slow and clumsy attempts to bash me into silence brings me enormous joy.

Basically, I am a verbal-only Spider-Man. And I love it. Give me some verbal sparring partners and I can truly express my combative side that just wants to get in the ring and go’er without having to hold back.

I could totally imagine being one of those guys who goes out to bars looking for a fight if I had gotten a different start in life.

But instead I keep it to video games. One of the factors in my video game addiction is definitely that they give me an outlet for my craving for feisty fisticuffs.

I shudder to think of what I would be like if I didn’t have that outlet. Way harder to get along with, that’s for sure.

I’d probably get increasingly volatile and quick to anger before blowing my top over some stupid little thing.

Or I would just embrace my destiny and become a raging arsehole most of the time. Sarcastic, arrogant, superior, dismissive, obnoxious, pushy, and selfish.

God, I would be such a nightmare.

Good thing I got video games!

More after the break.

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Take a deep breath

I would if I could.

Often, when I wake up, I am already out of breath. That’s what happens when you have obstructive sleep apnea, it’s completely untreated, and you smother dozens of times an hour while you sleep.

I suppose it could be worse. It could wake me up every time it happens. Then I would barely be able to sleep at all.

I shudder to think.

I am getting better at recognizing that I feel crappy when I wake up because there’s a lot of used air that has accumulated in my lungs and if I want to feel better and beable to breathe properly, I need to empty my lung to make room for fresh air.

The kind with oxygen in it.

And I know that this is bad. That I really, really should make yet another attempt to make friends with my CPAP machine so I can sleep and breathe at the same time.

It seems impossible but it’s true.

And I am trying to work up the nerve to do just that. Give it another try. I know that, obviously, not asphyxiating in my sleep all the time could make a huge, huge difference in my quality of life by improving my quality of sleep.

Not to mention my blood oxygen levels.

And I think it’s been long enough since “the incident” where a kink in the CPAP hose made me wake up completely unable to breath until I ripped the mask off that I am at the very least no longer terrified of trying again.

Just very, very nervous.

It’s a hill worth climbing, that’s for sure. But a tough one. Getting used to having the mask on my face and that rather loud machine near my bed and a hose connecting the two that makes it so I can’t just roll over onto my other side without yanking the machine across the room – PLUS the worried about the hose getting kinked – makes for a daunting challenge, especially for someone as flighty as I am.

And as lacking in self-discipline.

So for now, I will just think about it, and wait for the next parting of the clouds in my internal weather system that leaves me feeling good enough to really push myself.

Until then I will just keep sleeping as badly as ever.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.