I love this kind of thing.

It never fails to get a laugh out of me if it’s witty enough.

I think it’s partly because I am words over pictures person and never like having to read supposedly international instructions in order to use something. So comedy like this is a tension breaker for me.

Rubber duck, you're the one...

Click the link for more! .

Yup, more navel gazing self analysis. I figure if I am going to feel down like this, might as well use it.

I think, on the whole, it is a good thing that I am beginning to realize in what ways I was not the easiest kid to get along with. Certainly, it would be easier to just go on believing I was a perfectly innocent and marvelous child who did absolutely nothing to deserve or even contribute to the bad things that happened to me and all my isolation and loneliness and so forth and so on. And a certain field of naive psychology might say I am better off not thinking about things which might make me sad like this.

But that’s simply not how I operate. Things are rarely black and white in life, and I am a firm believer that you are always better off understanding the full true picture, blemishes and all, rather than clinging to a cartoon image of your life which is nicer but riddled with cognitive dissonance because deep down, you know there is more to the story than that.

So with the clarity of hindsight, I can see that I was quite a handful for an adult to handle when I was a kid. I didn’t behave at all like other children my age, and if you tried to treat me like you would another kid that age, I would quite honestly take it as an insult, because to me, they were treating me like an idiot and that was a thing up with which I would not put.

I was thinking about this earlier in relation to why I never liked Mister Rogers. I like him now, and have enormous respect for the goodness and wisdom he taught children for so many years. But I didn’t like him at all as a kid. He reminded way too much of exactly the kind of adult that I couldn’t stand, the kind that talks slow and melodically and is super nice in a creepy kind of way and just did not behave like a normal person at all. Those people bothered me a lot more than, say, clowns. Clowns, I could at least grasp that they had a role, a job, something they were trying to do. The Mister Rogers type adults just freaked me out.

After all, my parents never treated me like that. Sure, they were gentle with me (mostly) and didn’t try to make me do calculus in my crib or anything, and my mother spoke to me sweetly, but not like that. Not in that weird fake slow motion placating way that I still, frankly, can’t stand. Treat kids like kids, but treat them with a little respect, you know what I mean?

So right off, as a kid, I was hard to deal with because whatever techniques an adult would normally use on a kid my age would be met with confusion, withdrawal, or even rudeness and sarcasm and contempt if it was intrusive enough. God, I had attitude.

And the more I think about it, the more I come back to the explanation that my preschool childhood simply did not prepare me for school. I only had one person to relate to most of the time, and that was my babysitter Betty. She could handle me. She was a tough no-nonsense working class gal from the other side of the tracks, and she did not take any crap from me. She had easily enough personality and will to handle anything I might dish out. That kept me in line (and kept me from being a brat, which given my IQ and attitude could easily have happened), but it did not prepare me for getting along with kids my age. And what do you know, I always got along better with adults, especially ones who were tough like Betty. My favorite teachers were often ones everyone else hated and thought were assholes or bitches.

But I needed that kind of resistance.

And the big thing is, I never went to kindergarten. When it was time for me to go, there were too many applicants, and I was ridiculously intelligent and could already read and so on, so they figured “Well, this kid doesn’t need the help!” and I did not get to go.

And they were right, I certainly didn’t need to learn my ABCs or anything of that sort. But I was in desperate need of social education, as it turns out. Who knows, in the more relaxed atmosphere of a kindergarten, with the right teachers who knew how to handle a little bundle of fire and sparks like I was, I might have found a way to get along with the other kids and found a niche, instead of being that fat kid nobody likes who thinks he is SO SMART my whole life.

I don’t blame myself for causing my own problems as a kid. Hey, I was just a kid, I didn’t know any better. The real blame goes on a system that simply did not know how to handle me and most of the time was perfectly content to just ignore me and concentrate on the kids who “needed more help”.

Turns out, I needed a lot of help. Just, not in the classroom. In the schoolyard.

You have to check this odd little Flash animation binary tree… thingy.

It’s very simple. You will see an animation then be presented with two options, represented by abstract symbols. Pick one. You will see another animation, and two more symbols. Pick again. Eventually, you will pick one that resents you back to the little seed at the beginning.

Then you get to see where different decisions will lead you.

The animations are the reward, and they are a ton of fun. Oh, but warning : some of them are gross, or painful looking, or just plain fucked up. But that is part of the fun, never knowing what the heck will happen next. It is rarely what you think it will be, and often quite amusing, in a Terry Gilliam kind of way.

I explored every option I could. No doubt I missed a few, but not through lack of trying. I have never had more fun exploring a binary tree in my life. There must be dozens of possible outcomes.

I think Fly Hamlet is my favorite.

Have fun checking them out!

I have been meditating on what a strange child I was lately.

For one thing, there was the precocious intelligence. I learned to read when I was two years old. I soaked up information like a sponge. I dazzled all adults by being able to talk to them at a surprisingly adult level given I was not even in school yet. I read Shakespeare. (Well, I read the words. I couldn’t follow it because of all the archaic language and so on. But I read it!)

So I had an early experience of people being wowed (and, in retrospect, I think kind of intimidated) by me and all I was doing was things which came naturally and easily to me.

That has to have had an effect on my idea of the world and how it should work.

And I didn’t play with toys. I would get toys as gifts, and play with them for half and hour or so, and then barely even look at them again. I vastly preferred books, books kept me entertained and stimulated for far longer than some toy that just did a few things.

I never did anything like using my toys as little play-actors in imaginative story play. The idea never even occurred to me, to be honest. Despite being a lonely child with nobody to play with, somehow I never developed the desire or ability to make up stories in my head and use my toys to act them out. I just read books and watched television, and later played video games. Those provided a lot of stimulation without me investing a lot of effort.

And it cannot be normal or good to grow up without playmates either. For a brief time, I had friends in my next door neighbour Trish and my across the street neighbour Janet. But they were older than me, and so went to school years before I did, so I didn’t have them long. And my siblings were much older than me, so they were off into the world of school and their own social lives far before me.

So I was raised by a babysitter until school age, then I was pretty much on my own. I never had real friends in school, and when I had friends at all, it was generally a fairly abusive relationship. I didn’t have anything like a close friend until I was in college.

And it’s no wonder. I think I missed the boat on socialization, more or less. I never learned to make friends and get along with people. I was a loner, though not by choice. But by the time I went to school, I had already missed some vital stage where one learns to get along with people one’s one age. The things other kids my age liked to do, I found pointless. I didn’t think like them at all. I was vastly overdeveloped on the cerebral front, but woefully retarded on the social front. And nobody knew or cared.

That was partly my fault, though, because I was not an easy kid to teach or deal with. Granted, I was no little hooligan, running around all crazy and getting hurt and so on. Physically, I was quite well behaved. But I had a big mouth and a combination of high IQ and intense stubbornness and willfulness that made me pretty hard to handle, especially because I was not even slightly intimidated by adults and knew damn well they could not force me to do what I did not want to do.

So once I went to school, there was nobody who could control me. That is probably not good for a kid. Most of the time, I was well behaved. But when it came to things that did not come easily to me, like gym, or arts and crafts, I would simply refuse to do them, and what is more, I would get away with it. After all, I was so good at the rest of school.

Ironically, if I had not been good most of the time, the system likely would have taken more of an interest in me. Instead, I largely faded into the woodwork. Nobody even seemed to really care that I was mistreated by bullies all the time. I suspect they figured I deserved it for being so weird and difficult.

So I was a strange boy who had a very lonely and isolated upbringing. Very little of my childhood was normal. And even as an adult, I am still not very close to people.

Honestly, I don’t know how to be.

Oh crap, I haven’t written anything on here today, have I? Fuck.

Well, even though I have made no formal declaration of intent like I did with the Million Words, I still feel I should write something every day, so here goes.

I am very sleepy and kind of incoherent and possibly dizzy from insecticide fumes, so tonight’s entry should be extra crispy fried, caliente style. Very rill of mentation. I mean, brook of awareness. I mean…. stream of consciousness. Right? Right.

The voices in my head are trying to form a choir. Fucking Glee.

Anyhow, fumes. The anti bedbug chemical warfare happened today, and so much will be better in here on the whole being blood sucked by disgusting vermin who strike in darkness where we’re most vulnerable kind of thing front.

Insert dreadfully low-hanging “politician” or “lawyer” joke here.

So the dark scourge of bedbuggery is, hopefully, defeated in the kingdom of Nerdvania. We still have lots to do. like laundering everything we can and vacuuming like crazy and so on, but the crucial blow is struck and soon this tiny bit of apartment building domesticity will be infestation free. There will be a return trip by the exterminator in four months, to get any that were dormant that long, but for the most part, the long national nightmare should soon be over.

We had to go to a medical supply store to get the very necessary bug proof mattress cover for my king sized bed. That way, if there are still bugs way down deep, it doesn’t matter, because the little evil fuckers cannot get to their food supply, namely yours truly.

Turns out, they never go more than two feet from their food supply. So if you can nuke the bed with pesticides then ziploc it up, and then keep all bedbug friendly things way from the bed for two weeks, that should shut them down but good.

The first covers we looked at nearly cave me a heart attack, because the king sized one was $230. Mama mia. But turns out, that was an extra fancy padded one designed to block not just bed bugs but dust mites, which are much smaller. Some people have a serious allergy to dust mite droppings and (I hope this is not a shock to folks) but wherever you have people, you have dust mites. They live entirely on our dead skin cells, which we human beings shed constantly, and for the most part, they are completely harmless and actually clean up after us rather nicely.

But some people are allergic to their leavings, and they need these super expensive mattress covers in order to keep the mites at bay.

Luckily, the simpler cover is all I need to fight bedbuggies, and it was only around 70 bucks. Still, with that, plus the covers for the box spring, plus the extermination fee… I owe my roomie Joe a lot of money. I will only be able to pay him back a bit at a time.

I hate owing money, especially to friends. But I don’t have a choice.

I have honestly wanted some sort of slipcover for that mattress for a while, though, so I am glad to finally have one. They keep my lovely sleep apnea sweat from soaking into the mattress, and can be laundered now and then to keep things fresh. I have been without one for WAY too long. So that works out.

And all the cleaning I had to do in order to be ready for the exterminator has really made this room a much cheerier and more pleasant place. The vacuuming especially has made it nicer smelling and easier to breathe and all those good things.

Now I just have to fix it in my mind that this is a very nice state, one well worth the tiny amount of work every day it will take to keep it like this. I have to repeat, over and over to myself, “This is nice. Let’s keep it nice.” If I can do that, I can hopefully slowly deprogram myself from life long laziness and slobness and general total neglect of myself and my environs.

Something obviously went wrong with my early childhood to make me such a slob. I would say it was during the anal phase, but I just don’t wanna go there, for obvious reasons.

Well, I suppose that’s enough of my fjord of cerebration. I am going to throw some more bedding onto the bed, and some sleeping on to the sleep thing, and go to bed.

Seeya later readers!

Once more, it’s time to write and I don’t feel like coming up with something clever or meaningful or ambitious, so what you get is whatever bergs calve from the glacier of my mind and float your way.

Trust me, that’s the least disgusting metaphor for my mental processes I could think of on short notice.

And the thing is, I have no excuse for all this creative laziness. True, I’ve been sleeping more than usual lately. My sleep apnea seems to have taken a turn for the worse and shows no sign of turning back. So my days have a lot of that oh so fun super intense sleep where I dream really deeply and vividly because the Paxil in my brain is partying down with the anoxia and depression and dragging my sorry ass through the spirit realm or The Dreaming or some shit, and I wake up feeling like I just stumbled out of the glowing smoldering wreckage of Hiroshima, and I barely manage to eat and eliminate before I got to stumble right back into that radioactive crater and go another round with Mister Sandman and the pain machine from the Princess Bride.

So I suppose that’s some sort of excuse after all. All this brain bruising bog burning bed time really does take a lot out of me, and doesn’t leave me a lot of time and energy to actually do things.

But still, I’m not asleep or eating all the time. I played No More Heroes 2 on the Wii for like five hours last night. (Thanks, caffeine!). That crazy Kimmy bitch is way harder to beat on normal difficulty. I beat the game on what turned out to be “easy” mode. They only give you two options when you start, and so I figured “I will pick the less hard one, because I have not played this game before. ” But then, after I beat it on that difficulty level, a third one popped up, and I realized “they tricked me into playing on easy mode by not offering hard mode by now! Ow, my gamer pride!”

So I am going through the game again, and it’s a very different experience when you have to like, try hard and pay attention and stuff. Frankly, I think I am enjoying it more this time through, although of course there’s a lot more cursing and losing by a tiny bit over and over and feeling like throwing the Wiimote at the screen and all those other things that make playing video games such a relaxing and serene hobby.

But hey, the labour theory of value is inviolable… you will value something more if it costs you more effort. Our parents try to tell us this, but from them it always sounds like they are just trying to trick us into doing more work or having less fun, so we never believe them.

But if a video game can be rewarding enough that you will put a great deal of effort into beating it, investing heavy sweat equity into it, you will enjoy it more than some cakewalk with pretty graphics.

Once I actually get some reasonably awake time together with some actual ability to focus and make plans and do shit, I will hopefully go back to writing more ambitious things. Or start something totally different and unexpected and wild. Like I do.

Tomorrow, hopefully, is the actual Coming of the Exterminator. It was supposed to happen last week, but there was a last minute SNAFU. I look forward to no longer being bit by the bedbugs (despite what people say, it doesn’t matter if you ‘let the bedbugs bite’ or not… bedbugs don’t give a shit) and being able to have Felicity come over and hang out again and in general being able to relax about the whole thing.

Some time between then and now, I have to put a few things away and do a little cleaning. I was all ready last weekend, so I just have to tidy up a little and put stuff away that I kind of had no choice but to take out of my closet again, like bedding. After the grand extermination, everything will go in the wash and into the dryer and that should take care of both pesticide residue and any remaining bedbugs.

The bad part is, in order to keep the buggies away, I am going to have to get a rubber slipcover for my mattress…. and I have a king sized bed. That is going to be expensive.

Being poor sucks so bad.

But first, this :

Um.... I think this means he wins bicycle forever.

Holy fuck, dude! That is beyond sick. That’s downright terminal. That trick is in hospice care and fading fast.

Seriously, how the fuck is that possible? Who could top that? You win, man. You win at bicycle forever.

But I promised you more kitty goodness, and here it is :

Use your words! Oh right. You're a cat. Never mind.

I feel bad for the LOLs on this one. That poor dog was just getting on the kitten’s nerves a lil too much, I guess. But it’s just such a comically extreme FALCON PUNCH kind of strike. And the dog does not seem hurt so much as just terribly confused. He has no idea WTF just happened to him. One second he was leaning against the cat and the next he was on his butt and his head hurt a little.

Faster than the human eye strikes the heart of the tiger! Well, faster than a dog’s brain, anyhow.

This one totally needs Jack In The Box music.

POP GOES THE KITTEN!

Anyone care that I am not posting serious articles as much lately? No? Good.

Cats are nature’s perfect predators, with finely balanced bodies and a keen innate sense of distance and angles that lets them perform feats of astonishing agility and power and make it seem easy.

But things like this still happen.

Major LOL for reals, y’all. It’s not just that Miss Kittums didn’t make it, it’s that she was not even close. I am thinking the owner of this cat needs to take his cat in for an alignment or something.

Seriously though, I have seen many cats do this sort of thing in life. It seems those instincts do not guarantee success, just make it possible. After all, we have instincts too, and yet walking still takes us a bit of time to master when we are little. And we still trip now and then. Nobody’s perfect.

But somehow, it’s just funnier when it’s a cat. They are normally so sleek and agile and toned and casual about their ninja powers that, as long as it’s clear the cat is not hurt, things like this are hilarious.

I picture the cat looking around to see if anyone saw that, then looking at the camera and the smirking human, and doing the feline equivalent of “D’oh!”.

This is quite handily one of the most clever and well executed fake movie trailers I have ever seen.

What movie is the Morgan Freeman stuff from?