Daily Archives: September 4, 2012

News on a Tuesday

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Or should that be Tuesday Newsday? Oh god, that sounds like another regular feature. I swear, I set out to keep things loose and format free in order to allow for the maximum scope of self-expression, and yet somehow, order seems to coalesce out of the planned chaos like crystals forming in a hyper-saturated solution. Oh well, I am getting tired of talking about myself anyhow.

Yesterday, I was just too damned tired to do anything else.

But today is a new day, and for today at least, I shall talk about the world outside my head for a change.

First up, there is this rather amusing (in a bitchy ass way) story of literary malfeasance.

The story is thus told : Award winning and highly successful crime writer R. J. Ellory has been caught red-handed using an alias to write glowingly positive reviews of his own works on Amazon.

As a (in theory at least) writer myself, I find this hilariously scandalous. How extraordinarily embarrassing for him! I am sure it will not have much of an impact on his book sales, but in the literary world of authors, agents, publishers, etc., this must be profoundly humiliating, and I doubt he will be showing his face at press events any time soon.

And I find that funny. I was unaware of this guy’s work before now, so it’s not like I am a fan of his, so I feel no need to defend him. And what he did was clearly dirty pool, so it’s not like I do not feel he deserves what he gets.

But I will say that I understand how a writer might read some awful reviews of his work on Amazon and convince themselves that there was Only One Way To Set The Record Straight.

But then again, he also used his alternate persona to slag the competition, so really, he does deserve whatever social fallout rains down upon him for doing something so hilariously petty.

I mean seriously. That is like faking your death so you can attend your own funeral.

From that petty crime, I am afraid we must move on to a story of a truly horrible (yet, I must guiltily admit, also pretty badass and awesome) crime from Turkey.

Picture this : You are a 26 year old Turkish woman. You have two children. For months, you have been being raped by a man who blackmails you into sex by threatening to send nude pictures of you to your family, which would be a serious enough thing here in the West, but I am betting in Turkey might just get you killed, or at least, permanently thrown out of your family as a horrible slut.

Then you find out your are pregnant by your rapist. And he tells you maybe he will send the nude pictures to your family anyway, and tell them all about what a dirty slut their daughter is.

What do you do, faced with this scenario?

Well, the woman in question shot her rapist ten times, then cut his head off and threw it into the town square, and declared “This is the head of the man who toyed with my honour!” when police arrived to arrest her.

Which, you have to admit, is pretty fucking epic. It is hard for me to retain my usual reverence for human life and insistence that everyone has a right to live and nobody has a right to take that away in the face of such a Tarantino level of epic badassery delivered to someone who so richly deserved it.

Turkish women’s groups have praised the woman, and I can see why. Not only did this woman stand up for herself, but she did it in a language that men understand : brutal fucking retribution, and in the name of honour, no less.

This, I think, will get the message across in a way that all the marches and posters in the world never would. Sad but true.

After all, look at what Columbine did for bullying.

Still, it is an unpleasant subject, so let us round out today’s news with a super positive story about, basically, the most awesome father ever.

What makes him the most awesome father ever? Glad you asked.

See, he has a little son who likes to wear skirts and dresses, and to paint his nails. This was not a big problem when they both lived in West Berlin, but then they moved to a very conservative little village in South Germany (did I mention he’s German?) and people were a lot less accepting.

So his little boy, out of fear of being teased by his classmates, stopped wearing the skirts and the nail polish. But his father knew this was making his son very sad.

So his dad did the most amazing thing I have ever heard : he put on a skirt himself so his boy would not feel self-conscious wearing one.

And now the boy goes to school dressed as he pleases, and when the other boys tease him, he just says “You would do this too if your dad was as brave as mine!”.

And you know what? For a few of them, at least, that is probably true.

Needless to say, I heartily approve. Obviously, this is a father for whom there is truly nothing in the world more important than his child’s happiness, not even his own dignity or masculinity.

And that makes him not just an awesome dad, but an awesome human being. When I first read the story, I had such overwhelming admiration for this man that I kind of wanted to ask him to marry me.

The fever passed, but the admiration remains. He has officially raised the bar on fatherhood for all men. Sure, lots of fathers say they would do absolutely anything for their kids, but how many of them would show up in public in a skirt for them?

Scotsmen not included, of course. That would be cheating.

Sunday, Monday… crappy day!

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Today’s been kind of shite.

But first, we will back up a bit.

I forgot to ask my therapist for more Zopiclone on Thursday. To be fair, he should have asked. Anyhow. As I have certain social issues, it took me until Saturday to work up the nerve to call him to ask for more.

I got his voice-mail. Frankly, in social anxiety terms, that was actually preferably. I am not proud to admit that, but there it is. I left him a voice-mail explaining that I forgot to ask for another prescription for Zopiclone on Thursday, and that I was worried that it was not the sort of thing that one should go cold turkey on, so I needed more before I saw him next Thursday.

A few hours later, he called back. He told me to go ask the pharmacy for an emergency prescription to see me through to Thursday, because he did not do phone prescriptions. And not to worry about going cold turkey from Zopiclone, it was perfectly safe, I just “wouldn’t sleep”.

And being who and how I am, I did not realize how angry I was about his lack of assistance and his offloading the responsibility onto me and especially about his flippant attitude towards the prospect of me not sleeping for five fucking days.

So he is going to get an earful and a half when I see him on Thursday. I am seriously pissed off at him. How dare he make me have to go basically beg for pills in order to stay healthy and get some sleep? Especially since he knows I have serious issues with asking for things and assertiveness in general? How dare he suggest that lack of sleep is nothing to worry about, when he was the one who put me on Zopiclone in the first place specifically because I complained of not being able to sleep.

And said, at the time, “Oh, we better take care of that. If you can’t sleep, nothing else works. ” He seemed to think it was a serious problem then. But now that I called him on a Saturday, when he’s at home, suddenly it is no big deal to go sleepless for almost a week? Fuck THAT.

And I have been through the whole “emergency prescription” thing before, when I ran out of pills. The pharmacists are really, really, really reluctant to give you one, and look at you like you are a homeless junkie trying to pull a scam on them for some free methadone or some shit, and it is like pulling teeth to get them to do it.

And when you are socially awkward and anxious like I am, with a specific issue with asking people for things because of childhood experiences being punished for asking for things, to even call the doctor in the first place and ask for more Zopiclone was extremely hard. To then be casually dismissed (just like my parents used to do!), as if my needs were unimportant and what happened to me really did not mean two shits to the person I am asking, was really emotionally brutal to me.

It certainly did not put me in the right frame of mind to be able to go over to the pharmacy in person and ask for yet another thing from a person in authority, one I already know is going to greet the request with suspicion bordering on hostility.

That is just not in the cards for me right now. I just cannot do it. Not after getting the brush-off from my therapist, whom I am supposed to be able to trust completely so I can open up to them, and rely on them to be on my side in a crisis.

Well he wasn’t there for me when I needed him, and that, sadly, adds a substantial amount of weight to the the “misanthropy” side of the scale for me. I have been trying to fight this misanthropic mistrust of people as unreliable and weak for my whole life, and I really did not need an incident like this pushing me more towards bitter cynicism right now.

I already have trouble trusting people. But you know that already, Doc. I told you.

Anyhow, as it turns out, I can sleep without the Zopiclone, it is just a little harder to get to sleep.

As a result, today was a Very Sleepy Day. I slept more or less the whole day, from 8 am to 8 pm, with only a token waking period to eat a terrible lunch.

Had an interesting dream. As usual, took place in an informed-attribute version of my home town of Summerside, Prince Edward Island. I was trying to get home from someplace, and I was really eager to get home (a very common theme in my dreams), and so I started to take shortcuts through restaurants.

And these were very fancy restaurants. There was a very minimalist chic “tablecloths and candlelight” type of restaurant, and another super tony restaurant was done in the style of a Japanese rock garden. I actually hopped along the stones like they were stepping stones in that one.

In fact, the longer this went on, the more it stopped being like just taking a shortcut and the more it become like I was desperately eluding pursuit. I took more and more extreme measures to speed my travel, like barging through kitchens, going out fire exits, and weaving around people and waiters.

And even in the dream, I wondered “When did my little home town get all these fancy restaurants? And where the heck am I? I know my home town pretty well, and I have no idea where they would even put this kind of concentration of restaurants I have never seen before. ”

Eventually, I started getting really freaked out. Like, getting to the “animal fear” level of being freaked out, where you have practically no rational thought left, just anxiety.

So I just stopped and sat down at a random table at one of the restaurants, trying to catch my breath and get out of this weird ice cold fear, weirdly reptilian frame of mind. I think on some level I was also thinking “They will never expect this!”, whoever “they” were.

Things get a little fragmented after that. I remember seeing people I know come in, and slinking off to a dark corner so as not to be seen… yet. Because the really weird thing is, I wanted these people to find me, but just not yet. Like this whole thing had just been a childish stunt to punish them and make them worry about me because of something they had done to make me angry at them, and to see if they cared enough to come looking for me.

This is particularly interesting when I am having problems with trust, and feeling like nobody cares about me enough to put in any effort on my behalf.

after that, it became weird dreams about food, with a bunch of incidents of accidentally eating food meant for someone else, but not seemingly to really care either.

Then, of course, I woke up with low blood sugar and had to do the zombie walk to the kitcehn in order to get some food into me and regain my humanity before I die.

That is suall what eating dreams mean for me.

Meh. There is more, but I am bored with myself, so that is all for now.