Or was that “links”? Well, just to have all the bases covered :

A lynx. her cub, and you going AWWWWWW!

Got a few links to share, plus some random chat about my life.

Had a bit of a weird thing happen today, though it is not unprecedented. Woke up from a nap to find I was very dizzy. It was not so bad that I could not get around in order to make supper and eat it, but it was still very irritating and I felt like every time I moved my head, my whole world lurched into a spin in that direction. My head also felt way bigger and usual, and even when I was sitting still, I had this feeling like the room was spinning very very slowly.

Luckily, this has happened to be before, so I was not as freaked out by this as I might have been. I am pretty sure it happens due to a fluid buildup in my inner ear from seasonal allergies, and so all I have to do is clean my ears thoroughly then lie down and wait for the world to stop spinning, more or less.

And that is what I did, once I was finished eating. I feel more or less fine now, the dizzies have gone away, But it was damned unpleasant for a few hours.

But then again, there’s Star Wars ninjas.

It is pretty impressive for a fan made video. The Star Wars angle, to me, seems slightly tacked on. I mean, these are clearly just regular dudes in some warehouse or whatever. Take the special effects away, and it is just another action sequence.

Not that the Star Wars stuff does not add a lot of sheer awesomeness to it. Force powers are very cool, especially when integrated into high intensity combat like in this video, and so I suppose that is all the justification for their inclusion that is needed.

Plus, you have to admit, “Star Wars ninjas” as a title is instant Internet bait. After all, it worked on me, and I am all jaded and shit, so it must be an attractive premise.

The real star of the vid, though, is the action, and that is mighty impressive on its own, and double intense impressive for a fan film. The guy who plays our unnamed protagonist has some serious moves, and those are clearly not special effects. He had to be able to really move like that, and that is no mean feat. If he did not move so well, the whole thing would have just come across as another dorky fan video that is mostly about the special effects.

But these people clearly have learned a lot about high octane action from modern movies like The Raid, and it makes the video a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

Amazing what you can do with a bunch of friends, some digital cameras, and off the shelf programs like After Effects, isn’t it?

Also on the “cool video” front is this rather fun short film slash music video from South Africa done in a stylish and loving B movie style about the Attack of the Hedadas.

Truth be told, I don’t care much for the song. Seems pretty washed out and structureless and hookless to me, typical of this era of music. Seems to be working hard to make sure it does not become musically interesting. Perhaps that is the “new sound” these days, but I am a classicist and therefore newness means little to me. It is good, or it is not, new or old, regardless.

But who cares about the song, because the video itself is so much fun! Oh, FYI, a hadeda is a large bird native to all of southern Africa. Its named is actually an onomatopoeia for its loud and distinctive haa-haa-haa-de-dah call.

Anyhow, back to the video. It reminds me most of a Dee Lite video, only with more violence and giant birds. The violence is quite cartoony, though, and overall I found the video to be fun and funny and kitschy and quite the enjoyable little short movie, lame music aside.

One little nit : why did they switch from subtitles to voiceover half way through? Also, I was a little disappointed, but not really surprised, that Mister Ranger Man got killed. I wanted him to survive, but you need monster fodder in these kinds of movies and this video does not exactly have a cast of thousands.

Finally, not a video but a picture. One that is surely rocketing around the Internet right now and becoming fodder for a million Photoshoppings as we speak.

And if people ever figured out who the guy at the end of the red arrow is, he will be famous in a very embarrassing way for at least his fifteen minutes.

Thank God nobody can see me here.

Yup, that is some dude in a baseball cap taking a leak right behind (from one camera’s POV) the President of the United States giving a speech.

That is one heck of a way to make the news. Many have speculated that this fine fellow has made the classic camper’s mistake of defining what counts as “peeing behind a bush” only from the point of view of the group of people you just left, and not, in fact, realizing that one point of view’s “out of sight” is another point of view’s “right in front of God, the President, and millions of people worldwide. ”

I made that mistake once as a wee child, and thankfully never made it again. Good to get these things done when you are young and clueless and people will just find it cute.

But my theory is that this guy did this on purpose, as a bit of political performance art.

See, he was just doing an impression of Mitt Romney : behind Obama, and pissing himself.

In a brooding mood today, not sure why. Still not quite catching up with how my sleep works now. I am having problems recognizing the difference when I am done sleeping and it is time to face the day, or when I need more sleep and should go back to bed for a while.

I just spent three rather brooding hours lying in bed, not really sleeping at all, but just laying there trying to sleep and not getting anywhere. What the hell was I doing, exactly? Why didn’t I realize I was not getting anywhere and just give up and get up and start doing things?

Well, I know part of it is that intention lock-in problem I have mentioned once or twice before. When I plan to do something, it is very difficult for me to decide not to do it. And when I got up just before noon, I was still pretty tired, and so I said to myself “I will just go eat lunch and then come back and finish up sleeping. ”

And so, that is what I had to do, even if by the time I finished eating I was fully awake and not really sleepy at all, and probably did not need sleep at all. Had to try taking a nap anyhow. And I am not sure why. I just know I have this compulsion to do what I plan to do. It is surely going to get me in trouble some day, or at least, make me seem extremely crazy to people.

And it is definitely the same part of my psyche that makes me take disappointment so badly. It is not just that it hurts to think you are going to do something fun or nice and then find out you are not going to do it after all. It’s that said pain is wrapped in a much larger pain of sudden change of plans. I just cannot hack sudden change like that. It hits me like a physical blow to the gut and makes me feel like I suddenly lost part of me, and so it always hurts like hell and takes me a while to recover.

And it has always been that way with me. I remember a certain birthday when I was a kid. What I had asked for as a birthday gift was for my parents to get my old, hand me down, banana colored hand me down girl’s bike fixed. My parents decided to get me my own brand new awesome mountain bike instead.

So the morning of my birthday comes, and all my family is gathered around to see my no doubt Spielbergian reaction to this upgrade, and instead I just completely freak out, because I just cannot handle the sudden violation of expectation. I wanted my old bike, not this new thing that is taller and has a bunch of gears that I don’t know how to use and is so tall that my feet won’t touch the ground while I am in the seat any more so now I have to learn a whole new way to ride a bike!

So I was crying and angry and upset, when honestly I should have been tickled pink to have a brand new and much cooler bike that was NOT a hand me down. But the sudden change was just too much for me to handle. So instead of a magical moment of childhood wonder and happiness, they got an angry and accusatory ball of tears and recrimination.

I still fell kinda bad about that. I mean, I was just a kid, and you cannot go against your basic nature and mine is distinctly un-fond of surprises. But still. I can see how that was not exactly a happy day for anyone involved at all.

For the record, I eventually made friends with the new bike and learned to ride it, and it was my faithful steed for years and years to come. Heck, I still miss that bike. It was a lean mean street machine.

So anyhow, that was part of why I laid there trying to sleep for hours. I was just obeying my compulsion to do what I plan to do, regardless of whether it is still a good idea.

But I think I also just did not, for whatever reason, feel like dealing with reality. I remember feeling resentful and bitter about it while I was in the state of being sort of, but not really, asleep. I remember feeling like I just did not feel like facing life and its tensions and variables and complications, and so I was deliberately ignoring it, snubbing it, really.

This is not the sort of emotion I usually allow myself when I am full awake. It goes against my desire to remain a positive and open person. I usually keep my “Fuck you, world!” side firmly under wraps. So I find it interesting that it came to the surface so strongly when I was slightly asleep. Must be time for me to deal with that kind of feeling.

And that is not easy, because it is so unpleasant and so totally not who I want to be.

But there is no point denying that it is there, I suppose. There is a deep vein of glowering rage filled misanthropy in me that I have never really dealt with. A strong part of me that wants to tell the world (and everyone in it) to go fuck itself, and to take an angry and defiant stance against the world.

That is not usually who I am. I am usually a happy, amiable, affable type who does not like to dwell on the negative and just wants to get along with everyone in peace, harmony, and goodwill.

But the emotion is there, and I need to deal with it. I have a deep down rage against the world that has treated me so poorly, and no amount of logic or intention will change that.

And some day, it will come raging to the surface whether I want it or approve of it or not.

Better sooner than later, I suppose.

And no, I don’t mean this guy :

Hey, big fan, glad to meet you, let me shake your…. uh… maybe not.

I mean the mythological fellow who is supposed to go around dispensing sleep. I have been having trouble sleeping today and it is making me grumpy and irritable. And this, despite my new sleep medication, which is fairly potent stuff.

The problem is not sleepiness. That I have down, thanks to Quetiapine. It takes a while to kick in, but that is something you can just plan around. And yup, it puts me to sleep, and does so slowly but firmly, which is what I wanted. And it seems to be better quality sleep than I was getting before too, without as much mental disturbance making for fitful and disturbed sleep.

So far so good. But somehow, I am still not quite sleeping right. I have felt sleepy all day and keep trying to correct that with more sleep, but I seem to fall asleep very, very slowly, and therefore I do not get that much of the really good deep sleep before my goddamned bladder wakes me and I have to get up and empty it, thus resetting my whole sleep cycle.

And usually, by then, it is close enough to a meal time that it is easier to just stay awake until after I eat, and when I eat, I of course drink water, and so you can see how this whole cycle perpetuates.

I realize that my long ingrained habit of slow constant hydration is a big part of the equation here. All the sleep hygiene guides say not to drink anything within a couple of hours of going to sleep, and I try to adhere to that. In that, the fact that the pill can take up to an hour and a half to kick in actually helps in that. Take the pill during my midnight snack, then just do not drink anything before it kicks in. And make sure to empty my bladder right before I lay down to sleep.

But nevertheless, my kidneys seem to just keep cranking out urine regardless, and I end up having to get up to pee anyhow. No wonder I have a history of two to three hour naps. That is as long as my damned bladder will give me before it is pee trip time again!

That leads to stage 2 of problem, which is that I do not seem able to wake up just a little in order to make my little trips. I wake up all the way to full alertness, exactly as though I was getting up to face the day, and that makes getting back to sleep that much more difficult.

So again, no wonder about the two to three hour nap thing. It is almost like I am keeping to a six hour clock, two hours asleep, four ours awake, and every waking is a whole new day.

This, needless to say, is painfully fucked up.

I understand that other people do not have this problem. They can get up to take a leak and retain their necessary sleepiness, so when all is done, they can just go right back to sleep and it is nary a blip in their sleep cycle.

And that sounds great. I want to learn how to do this myself. I sometimes wonder if my parents’ oh so “progressive” move of taking away bed time and letting me sleep when I felt like it when I was still pretty young actually did me a disservice by interrupting the process of learning to sleep eight hours like a normal person.

Anyhow, it would be great to learn to wake up only a little, just enough to get the job done, and then go right back to sleep. But the problem is, by the time I am awake enough to remember that this is what I am trying to do, it is already too late.

Damned overmuscular meta-consciousness. Why do I have to be so awake to be aware?

Oh, speaking of awareness, I finally figured out something that had been bugging me. When I first got the Quetiapine, the pharmacist who handed them to me was smiling really big and sort of fake and said something about when I take this “… relaxant. ”

And I went away wondering the heck her deal was. Why did she say “relaxant” in the same way a small town church lady would refer to someone’s unwanted pregnancy as their “little problem”? And Quetiapine is not a relaxant. I mean, seriously lady, wad dee fug?

Well today, the penny finally dropped. She was handing me a powerful antipsychotic! She naturally assumed that I was probably a psycho, and not just any psycho, but a six foot tall bearded sort of scary homeless looking one. She was probably just a tad nervous and wanted to make sure I stayed nice and happy. She was giving me the same response anyone might if they just realized they might be three feet from a dangerous loonie. It totally makes sense now.

And now that I realize this, I find it very funny. I will totally be watching for how the pharmacy staff treats me now that they think I might be a dangerous lunatic, and not just a run of the mill depressed big fat diabetic dude.

Of course you know and I know that I am as harmless as a bag of marshmallows, and I am not a psychotic, I am just using an antipyschotic as an off-list sleep aid.

But the only official, on-list use for Quetiapine is as an atypical and its off-list uses are too many to mention, so as far as they know, I am potentially the sort of fellow who hears voices and who will sooner or later do what they tell him to do.

Hilarious. A little insulting, I suppose, but mostly just hilarious.

Seeya next time, folks.

Don’t ask me what a geegaw is. I don’t even know how to pronounce it. But somewhere in my mind, it is on Big List of Nonsensical Silly Words That Mean “Generic Name For Unknown Object”, and that is good enough for me.

Another phenomenal week in science. Indeed, my browser (and my RAM) overfloweth. Got a few creepy crawly heebie jeebie stories to share, but don;t worry, I have an Awesome News FROM SPACE to compensate for any skin crawling sensations you might be experiencing.

What can I say? I love the creepy stuff. At heart, I am just a weird little boy.

But let us start off with someone simple, interesting, and completely freaking cool first.

Destroyers of Planets

Check out the awesome science that those crazy kids at the Harvard Shock Compression Laboratory get to do.

Their mission : come up with various celestial collision scenarios, make up some simulated planetary stuff, then shoot it with a gas gun at speeds of up to 3 km per second at other planet stuff and record the hell out of what happens.

Why? Other than it just being cool, the idea is to get a clue as to what happens when large space objects collide, like say the asteroid collision that some think caused the Moon to shear off from Earth many millions of years ago.

And while they can’t show us the actual collisions, they can show us what happens to the stuff they use for the collisions.

It’s at the very end, but watch the whole thing, because the nerds are cute.

Bring On The Rats

Now, on with the creepy. First, seems like our friends down in Seattle might just have a big, big problem on their hands when they start up the Alaskan Viaduct project next.

Namely, they might set of a Biblical armageddon type event that has been dubbed The Ratpocalypse.

See, according to one theory, when the giant boring machines (which are never boring to me) start drilling their way into underground Seattle, a lot of rats and (gah) roaches who have had that area as their own for centuries are going to be freaked out by the noise and they will swarm up from below and into the buildings and homes of Seattle.

This seems like kind of a big deal to me, and I really hope these people are wrong. It is hard to know how much credence to give this theory, as it is being put forth by exterminators, who would both be the people in the best position to know what rats and roaches are going to do, but also the most likely to benefit financially from people thinking the Ratpocalpse is coming.

Also, one little note from the article :

Sprague is launching a campaign urging business owners near the waterfront to start protecting themselves now. The company is using bike billboards that say, “Save your building: Ratpocalypse is coming.”

Bike billboards? How freaking Seattle is that? It really is our sister city.

Nature Out Of Balance

But that is not truly creepy. The real hardcore stuff is coming out of Guam lately, and they are seriously in trouble because of a non-native snake that has invaded their fragile island ecology and made things go Very Wrong.

The snake in question is the brown tree snake, and it was accidentally introduced back in the 1940’s. Oops!

And the thing is, the brown tree snakes eat birds. All kinds of birds. And before the snake came along, Guam had a hell of a lot of species of birds. Thanks to this unassuming brown snake, the island of Guam has lost 10 out of every 12 species of bird.

And that is Bad. But it is not Creepy. Oh, but there is more.

See, all those birds had a favorite snack, and that snack was spiders.

And what happens, kids in Ecology 101, when all the things that ate the spiders are gone? After all, the snakes do not eat spiders.

That’s right, class. You end up with LOTS AND LOTS OF SPIDERS.

Here’s a bullet of pure nightmare :

“You can’t walk through the jungles on Guam without a stick in your hand to knock down the spiderwebs,” Rice researcher Haldre Rogers said.

The jungle is covered with spiders. Like I needed yet another reason to never ever ever want to go into the jungle again, ever.

And how do you fix a problem like that? Bring the birds back, the snakes will just eat them again.

My heart goes out to you, Guam!

The Farthest Star

And while I feel like this is the third or fourth time I have reported this, apparently, this time it is really really officially true : one of the Voyager spacecraft is heading out of the Solar System!

And as the article says, yes, this is huge. Launched in 1977, this human made object will be the first human thing to leave our solar system, ever. It is our herald, our explorer, our wanderer between the stars, our introduction to the rest of the Galaxy.

And it has already been through a lot. We did not sling this tiny craft into the cosmos with only the interstellar void in mind.

Before heading out to the Great Unknown, it visited Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus and gave us amazing pictures and data from all of them in their turn.

And now it will leave the heliosphere of this solar system and wander the interstellar void, to be perhaps picked up by some void hopping aliens who will marvel at this strange artifact from a bizarre and distant world, from a species that clearly wants to get to know them better.

Hopefully, we will not come across as needy or stalker-y.

Well that is it for the science roundup for this week, folks. Tune in next week, when you will hear Miss Piggy say : “Will anyone who reads this blog even get this reference?”.

Oh well, sometimes you have to do the occasional thing just for yourself.

Seeya next week, folks!

(Writer’s note : everything said in this piece is directed towards myself. Any similarity to other people, living, dead, or just friends, is entirely coincidental and I regret any offense given. )

No big surprise, but I did not end up going to the baby shower I talked about yesterday.

I just could not do it. I could not make myself go. Too many unknowns, too much fear, too much uncertainty. It was no great social faux pas, because it is not like I had RSVP’d and hence been expected. The invitation was for all us here in Nerdvana. I am pretty sure they were not surprised that I did not attend.

If I had been expected, that might have been enough to make me go. I take obligations very seriously and I cannot stand to let people down. If I had thought to RSVP with sufficient lead time for me to process the idea and get comfortable with it, I probably would have gone.

I can’s stand to disappoint people. I know how badly I take that kind of thing. It just crushes me to have something I was looking forward to disappear on me. Even if it is something as simple as a recipe not working or a friend having to cancel hanging out at the last minute, it hits me really hard. And so, by the principal of projecting empathy, I cannot stand the thought of doing that to someone else.

That is even why I hate to be late to anything. I can’t stand the thought of someone sitting there, waiting, uncertain, not know when I will show up. I hate it when people do it to me, and so I make sure I don’t do it to others.

I suppose you might call that basic consideration, or that Golden Rule “do unto others” thing.

But as it was, I did not go. And the tricky part now is to avoid the enormous burden of self-loathing that normally descends upon me when I make these sorts of fear-avoidance decisions.

I can hear the voices of self-reproach trying desperately to get into my mind. Keeping them at bay is an ongoing and arduous task. I am still getting used to this whole “avoiding the self loathing” thing, so the muscles and skills for it are still weak and uncoordinated. And it is so tempting to just let go and let nature take its course like it has so many times before.

But that would just be perpetuating the cycle. It is the very acts of self-loathing and self-attack that render you too weak to do anything about your problems. Only by stopping the cycle of self-abuse, by disabling the torturer inside, do you stand a chance of growing strong enough for long enough that you can get up off the rack and walk out that wide open prison door, out of the darkness and into the light.

And that is what you want, right? But you will have to leave that big wet cold security blanket behind. You will have to feel and grow and adapt. You will have to experience things, And there is a very strong chance that this will mean you will have to grow up.

So maybe that hard cold cell and the torturer’s whip do not seem so bad now. Maybe this rotten old cell has been protecting you all these years, and until you are willing to forego its protection, you will never escape it.

And the truth is, you don’t really want to escape. Otherwise you could have walked out of here decades ago. This whole setup is all your design, a closed system to protect you from the outer world and shut out all the noise and confusion that comes with facing reality.

The truth is that you are an acorn who refuses to grow into a tree. You are a tadpole that does no want to become a frog. Because that kind of transformation frightens you. You know who you are and what to expect as a tadpole. Who knows what life as a frog would be like? It looks scary and it could be much much worse than what you have now. Too many unknowns! And you are too smart to step on the path without knowing exactly where it leads, in detail, and with the option to quit at any time with no penalty.

So what if you are still a tiny tadpole when all the other tadpoles have grown up to be big, strapping frogs, gotten married, have lily pads and tadpoles on their own, and seem a lot happier than you.

You would never fall for all that normal stuff. After all, you have your pride. Your integrity. And most precious of all, your identity.

And after all, you are so damned smart!

And really, what is peace of mind, happiness, fulfillment, meaning, emotional richness, and accomplishment compared with knowing how smart you are and how you are always right?

And never, ever, ever having to grow up and change who you are one tiny bit?

And after all, you are too damned smart to face the unknown at all, ever. Better to suffer the torments of Hell than take absolutely any risks whatsoever or invest any effort into anything that does not pay off instantly.

Even if all it took to escape Hell was to get up and open the door, that would be too much of a risk of wasted effort for you. And after all, we have already established that you do not really want to leave anyhow, haven’t we?

Of course, you will still complain bitterly about how horrible life is in your self-imposed prison. You will paint yourself as a tragic victim of circumstances, but really, you are your own jailer.

You lock yourself away to acoid the day when you have to face adulthood and possible actually have to change as a person, and even grow up.

And that is the worst thing imaginable to you. You would rather die than face personal change. You want everything to change without anything changing.

So in conclusion… I guess the self-loathing thing sort of happened anyhow. Damn.

Here I am, in one of those “should I or shouldn’t I? ” situations again.

Today is the day of my friends’ baby shower. Ryan and Jennifer Hawe are holding a baby shower in anticipation of the arrival of their little one. I am quite happy for them, and wish them all the best as they enter that very big Next Stage of parenthood.

And I have the perfect opportunity to go to said shower. I am invited (naturally), my roomie Joe is driving there, I have enough time to finish this missive before the Joe bus leaves at 7 pm, and so all I would have to do is finish writing, take a quick shower, and be dressed and ready to go when the time comes, and I would be all set.

Well, there is the sticky issue of a present. I have neither the time nor the money to buy one, and to show up without one would be a tad gauche. I suppose I could slap a bow on one of my surplus plushies and call that a gift. Or I could bring a bottle of Merlot that a friend left in the fridge.

Then again, I suppose bringing alcohol as a gift to a baby shower would seem a tad tone deaf.

So there is that. I am sure I could come up with something if I really had to do so, though.

Therefore, in theory at least, I have no real reason not to go. But then again, there is that dreaded beast of my dark psyche, social anxiety.

There is going to be a lot of people there whom I do not know. And not my usual sort of person either. Normal people, with normal lives, and normal ways of thinking. People with whom I have very little in common and who (and this is the crux of it) are likely to find me weird and off-putting no matter how hard I try to not spook the herd.

And then, there I will be, socially isolated despite my best intentions once again, feeling like some sort of alien monster trying to blend in with the flock.

And while I talk the talk of being a happy little monster, to be honest, I am far too sensitive to be happy with upsetting people. The looks they give me like I have just started talking Swahili at them, or grown a new head out of each eyeball, just hurt so much. That cold feeling of isolation and rejection and the massive gulf opening up between me and them is just more than a delicate hothouse flower like me can withstand. It is the root of my social anxiety, and boy does that root run deep.

Now granted, my friends will be there, and they understand me. And the hosts, Jenn and Ryan, they know me. We used to be roomies. So they understand me. Ryan, perhaps, a bit more than Jenn.

So I would have some shelter from my fears. And I am probably making a bigger deal about who all will be there than is warranted. It is just that kind of thinking that led me to talk myself out of going to their wedding reception, which I still kind of regret.

I mean, this is just the kind of real-world experience I need, to be honest. Interacting with the wider world and learning to adjust to it. If you do not stay in the game, you will never learn to play it well. It is a lesson I have been trying to teach myself for quite some time.

But there is reason, and then there is fear. And my fear is mighty huge.

So will I go, or will I not? I wish I could just decide and be done with it. But there are too many factors involved, and too many emotions in play, and too many vectors to be resolved before I can have anything like a firm decision.

The easiest route to decision would be to just say “Nope! Not going. Those things are for healthy people. Normal people. Whole people. I will just stay home and stew in my own juices like usual. ”

But a big part of me would really like to go. I would like to show my support of the happy expecting couple, and they will probably have nice food and whatnot there, and so on.

But, at least at this golden moment, I do not feel up to it. And I think I have to learn to be okay with that, too. Part of taking the tension and painful indecision out of moments like this will be, like I said to Felicity last night, “giving myself permission to do both.”

Stay or go, both are fine. I am free to choose either without thinking any less of myself. No reward, no penalty, I am free to pick either without worry. Whatever I feel like doing.

But my feelings change with the wind, and leave me spinning like a weather-vane in a hurricane. I think part of the reason I am so left-brained and hence prone to imposing intellectual structure on my emotions rather than let the emotions take the lead is that being so sensitive makes it at least feel like if I was to follow my emotions, I would just run around in random circles and never get anywhere at all.

The more sensitive the instrument, the more erratic the readings, after all. And you cannot follow a wildly spinning compass around. Not when it does not slow down long enough to even take a reading.

But what makes it spin? Why are my emotions constantly in flux? Is there some way to cut down on the interference and turn noise into signal?

And if there was, would I have the courage to follow its reading, or would I just stay where I am anyhow, while part of me silently curses the loss of another excuse?

And what happens when I run out? What then?

Probably, I will just keep asking myself contrary questions till I am dizzy again.

So I guess this is “a thing” now. Three days of the week down, four to go!

First off, today is September 11, and that will be news for the rest of my life. We all have our 9/11 stories, some prosaic, some profound, but everyone who was alive that fateful day will remember what they were doing when they found out that America was truly under attack and two massive skyscrapers plus the Pentagon were destroyed.

My story is twofold. The prosaic : I found out what was going on because a friend contacted me via instant messenger and told me to turn on the news. I spent that morning trying to figure out just what was going on by going all over the Internet and watching the TV. It was a terrible day.

The profound : at the time, my brother in law Dean was working in the World Trade Center. If he had been on time for work that day, my sister Anne would likely be a widow today. As is, he was one of those people engulfed in the massive dust cloud that flooded the area when one of the towers came down.

So that tragedy cuts a little closer to home for me that for most, but only a little, and only in the sense of what might have been.

And I am a little sad to see the whole thing become a political issue in the opinion sphere today, but considering the political atmosphere in the USA this election year, hardly a surprise, and probably entirely inevitable. So be it.

And speaking of harsh political language, Barney Frank is standing by his denouncing of gay Republicans as Uncle Toms of the worst kind.

And while I often find Representative Frank fairly hard to like (he is shrill, he has an unpleasant demeanor, he has an annoying voice), I have no problem agreeing with him on this statement, and saying I admire him for being a rare Democrat who is willing to talk tough and stand by his words.

If there were more Democrats like him, maybe the Democrats would not get pushed around so much and would not have adopted the emotional response patterns of a beaten spouse constantly trying to placate an abusive partner instead of standing up to them.

The accusation of being Uncle Toms (or in my opinion, quislings) is fair and accurate. I cannot imagine another situation in which a group that is toadying up to people who clearly loathe them would not be met with similar vitriol.

Can you imagine a group of black people wanting to belong to a party that was segregationist and supported Jim Crow laws simply because “you know, other than the viewing us as inhuman savages thing, they have some pretty good ideas”?

I am not saying gay people cannot be conservative (in some ways, I am conservative myself) , I am just saying that nobody can respect anyone who takes that kind of abuse from people who clearly do not want them around, and frankly, hate them.

Maybe at another time, being a gay Republican would not seem like such a profound sacrificing of self-worth, but this Republican party?

Take a hint. They don’t want you around. Leave them and join the side that wants you.

Over in the good news column, there is this heartwarming column, Confessions of a Former Republican.

I am struck by how detailed Jeremiah Goulka’s account is, and how willing he was to not just make it a revival tent confession but to try to explain where he was coming from and how he made the transition.

I had my own disillusionment from what is still laughably called conservatism, although in my case, it was when I was a teenager and only just beginning to be aware of the world of politics and how I might fit into it. Yes folks… I was a teenage conservative.

And part of me still longs for the conservatism that I thought existed for a brief time as a teenager. One that represents pragmatic thinking, caution, careful spending of the public purse, sanity, a focus on solutions instead of ideals and outcomes instead of ideological conformity, and most of all, people who believe passionately in the possibility of good government.

And it says something about the insanity of these times that this sort of thinking is only found amongst relatively centrist liberals these days.

And part of me will never be entirely comfortable with that, and will always long for a party that believes in those things positively, not simply because the other side had gone completely insane.

Finally, a story that I kept meaning to get to recently but somehow it never made it in to anything : Black religions leaders in the USA are rallying black voters to counter those bogus Voter ID laws.

This is exactly what I was hoping (and predicting) would happen, and I am gratified that I have confirmation that is indeed going on.

Advocates for all the groups that the Republicans do not want to see at the polls should do the same, and I sincerely hope they are. As the article states, any attempt at voter suppression makes for an invaluable tool to use in order to get people to register to vote.

People will value their vote more if someone seems to be trying to take it away. That is just human nature, we value assets more when they are under threat.

So hopefully, the rather blatant and extremely offensive GOP voter suppression tactics will backfire on them tremendously and actually result, in the final count, in a net increase in votes for Obama.

Couple that with the very real possibility that none of these insulting measure will survive the legal attacks against them, and the scumbag Republicans might very well lose much from their underhanded and pathetically obvious attacks on democracy, and gain absolutely nothing from them but ignominious defeat and a tainting of the Republican brand for years to come.

And that’s all from the news for me today.

Hmmm. Now my website seems to be behaving like normal.

Well, business as usual until the time comes to migrate, I suppose. For now, anyhow. Perhaps when I habe a little more time, I will migrate anyhow and leave this website be as a ghost of what was.

I swear, sometimes it feels like the Universe conspires to rob me of dramatic effect. I make a big dramatic announcement yesterday, and now it is back to normal, nothing to see here, move along. Every time I leave a comment somewhere or otherwise write something and think “Well, that is sure to get me in trouble!”, people just plain do not respond.

It is that kind of thing that makes my inner lunatic want to do something really fucking crazy that nobody could ignore, just to get a little freaking validation.

You know, do something like take a walk through Richmond stark naked and see how far I get before I am arrested. Surely a naked fat guy walking down the street all casual, like this was perfectly normal, would attract some sort of attention.

Thought I must admit, even in my imagination, I see the distinct possibility of my walking as far as I can walk, and back, without getting even so much as a mild gasp of scandalized astonishmnet, and ending up just going home, dispirited and defeated, and putting some damned clothes on.

I realize that is not logical or likely, but the image still haunts me.

I mean, what does a fella have to do to decloak around here? Maybe that would be a good name for a blog about my struggles with depression and whatnot : Struggling To Decloak.

Of course, that could also be the name of a one man play starring George Takei.

But I better make some sort of point before I start to ramble. Hey, remember the Nash Rambler? Me neither, because I am not that freaking old, but apparently they looked like this :

It just screams burgers and malteds at the drive-in, doesn’t it?

You can click that bad boy for a bigger pic. Imagine, back then, there were like a dozen American auto makers and the idea that any American who was not super rich would ever buy a car from another country was completely laughable and downright insane.

And speaking of laughable insanity, let’s talk Republican shenanigans.

The Texas Republican Party has finally come right out and said it : Republicans are against critical thinking and higher thinking skills.

Specifically, they do not want them taught to children, as explained in this bullet point :

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Nice of them to come right out and say they are against higher order thinking skills. I have been saying that this is the root of conservatism for a long time but I hardly expected them to come right out and say “me no like thinky, thinky make Og brain hurt and make Og scared and confused. NO MORE THINKY OR OG BASH!”

Now, to be fair, after massive ridicule rained down on these prims via the Internet, the poor schmuck with the job of Texas GOP Communications director claimed that the inclusion of that clause was a “mistake” but that they could not go back and fix it now because they would have to basically hold another Texas GOP convention to do so.

So hilariously, they are stuck with it. They officially oppose the teaching of higher order thinking skills. Primitive thinking skills are all you need to be a conservative, apparently, and that whole higher order thinking part of the brain is therefore suspect and liable to just be a liberal trick invented solely to destroy faith in the family and in Jeebus.

But if that is not enough proof that Republicans suffer from a major reality issue, how about this story about how a recent poll shows that 15 percent of Ohio Republicans think that most of the credit for the Seal Team Six raid that killed Osama Bin Laden goes to….

C’mon, guess. Nope, not Seal Team Six. Not whichever of that team actually fired the bullet. And you know they are cognitively incapable of giving Barack Obama credit for anything.

Nope, according to this select elite, most of the credit for killing Osama Bin Laden goes to… maestro can we get a drum rool, please… the credit goes to… MITT ROMNEY!

What an exquisite case study in the complete and utter failure to think, even a little bit. They saw “credit” and “killing Bin Laden” and the only possible answer that could form in their tiny tiny reptile minds was it could have only been their current Leader Daddy Alpha figure.

Anything else, to them, would probably be literally unthinkable. After all, it would likely involve some of those forbidden higher order thinking skills that they hate so much.

It is not for us to question the Lawgiver!

It does not matter to them that this answer, that Mitty Romney is responsible for the death of Osama Bin Laden, makes absolutely no sense and flies in the face of even the current very flimsy sense of reality the Republicans permits.

It does not matter that, back in what the rest of us call reality, Mitt Romney not only had absolutely nothing to do with the death of Bin Laden but is actually on record as saying we should not “move Heaven and Earth” to get the guy in the first place.

You know, in that weird way that Republicans, en masse, totally forgot about the guy who killed thousands of Americans on American soil when the war in Iraq first got the push.

No, what matters to these people who decide what the truth is and only then go on to judge the facts by what they already know to be true, and therefore any so-called facts which disagree with what they already know to be true can only be filthy, filthy lies…

All that matters is that the answer is acceptable to their emotions.

Congruity with reality in comparison to their desire to never, ever have to think about things.

And that is conservatism in a nutshell.

Last night was my second night taking Quetiapine (pronounced kwet tie uh peen), and as I suspected, the results were far less drastic than the first time.

It did make me sleepy, but it took around an hour to do it, and I did not sleep all day like I did on Friday. I suspect that Friday’s result will prove highly atypical, and were the result of taking the pill when I already had a fairly heavy sleep debt built up.

So the pill just triggered a “sleepy day” that was probably going to happen soon anyhow. In some ways, that is a great relief. Catching up on sleep is great, but sleeping that much every single day would have gotten really old, really fast.

I already feel like I am sleeping my life away. I would hate to add sleeping 16 hours a day to that.

Which brings up that terrible subject, my tendency to nap when I am bored. That is still going to be a problem, no matter how good my sleeping pill might be. If I am not all that tired when I take the thing, it is not going to have a big effect. I doubt there is a sleeping pill around that can put you to sleep for eight hours even if you have already gotten six hours of sleep that day.

At least, none that are likely to be prescribed by my psychologist for just basic hyposomnia.

So once more, we are back at the “no napping” thing. It was a nice vacation from thinking about it while it lasted, but now that the whole new pill thing is in place, I have to go back to facing what the basic problem with my sleep is, and it is not sleep apnea or the wrong sleeping pill.

It is this napping through the day. I will never get a normal sleep pattern, eight hours a day in a row , until I can stop the napping, and that involves me learning to find more things to do with myself besides fuck around online, and reading till I fall asleep.

That means either writing a lot more than I do now, or finding activities around the apartment to do that are not my Usual Two, or maybe even (gasp) doing stuff outside the apartment.

I mean, I understand there is life outside my apartment.

But I am probably not ready for that yet.

Writing more is always an option. I could just casually double my daily word quota to 2000 words. That would certainly give me a lot more to do, but I am not sure it would get me anywhere. After all, it is not like my current quota of words is going out to an ever-expanding audience of fascinated readers.

(But remember, I value every single one of you that reads these words and makes this whole thing work for me, and I treasure every comment you leave. I love you all, and I take none of you for granted. )

I have also been contemplating coming up with a new crazy writing stunt, like “30 stories in 30 days”, or “10,000 words in a day”, or something like that. It would be more fun and more motivating than just an arbitrary word quota rise, but it, in and of itself, would not really get me anywhere either.

Does not matter what wild and wacky shit I do if nobody knows about it, does it? It would be like breaking a Guinness World Record with nobody around to witness it.

That would be a lot of hot dogs eaten for no damn reason.

That brings us to the subject of self-promotion. I… don’t do that. Which is kind of a problem. Clearly, all my hopes of some wildfire word of mouth campaign making me super famous are in vain and were probably not too realistic in the first place.

Especially since this blog is not a part of any social network or online community except for Livejournal and Tumblr, and even on those, I have no exactly worked hard to network and make connections with other bloggers and build up a following that way, either.

It is just so damned hard for me to put myself out there. I have this idea in my mind of putting together a grid of markets and stories, and it seems like the sort of thing that might actually work in terms of getting my stuff out there in some sort of methodical way, but so far, I have not gotten around to actually making the thing, let alone gathering ten of my stories together and doing the necessary proofreading and revision to make them presentable to the world.

Oh well, you can only do what you can do. Despite what popular media tends to teach, wanting something really bad is not the same thing as having enough motivation to actually do it. At least, not when you suffer from a disease called depression which acts like a black hole from which no motivation can escape.

All I really can do is let my energies build slowly over time while my recovery works its way through the twisted corridors of my mind, straightening things out (so to speak) as it goes, putting all my crazy little ducks into neat little rows.

It sucks to wait so long for health though. I am eager to go live life instead of letting it pass me by, but I can’t yet, not really. I can only get a little bit better every day, and live in hope of the day when I can break free from my old tired depressed self and be a stronger, healthier, happier me.

But Enlightenment comes a little at a time, and until then, I suppose I just better make peace with my cell, and try to make my experience in this self-administered mental ward as pleasant as possible.

And maybe spend more time on making things better, and less time looking out the window.