Writing a little early today to increase the chances that I will be bored enough to do something useful later on tonight.

Hey, it could work!

Plus, I have a fair bit of Diet Coke in me right now, so I probably could not sleep even if I wanted to sleep right about now.

Later on… who knows?

Anyhow, hi folks. Today, I did the therapy thing. I still can’t quite seems to get around to talking to my therapist about my feeling that I have been holding back all my life. Last week I sort of talked about it, but I was too tired to really get into it. This week, I tried to launch into it, but somehow ended up talking about how “suppressed” I have been.

Maybe it is for the best. Talking about my potentially huge ego over how bright I am is a sure way to make enemies of people, even therapists who should be above all that.

But therapists are people too, and in general they are educated intellectuals, and that means they are likely to have substantial ego investment in their own intellectual prowess.

So going around saying you might be the smartest person you have ever met is not going to go over well. It is bound to make your therapist defensive and after that, nothing useful will be accomplished between you, at least for that session.

And that just goes to show that there are some thing you can’t talk about with anybody, not even your very own personal shrink. In a perfect world, you could talk to your therapist about anything in the world, even how fucking smart you are, and they would just accept it like anything else you have told them and everything would be peachy.

But nope. Not to sound Ayn Rand or anything. but I am beginning to feel like I have been limited by other people’s inability to handle me, megawatt brain and terawatt personality and general wackiness and all.

I think I tried being the Full On Me when I was young, and it kept not “working”, so to speak, and so I shut away most of my personality and become a tiny shell of my potential self.

But enough of that shit. I realized today, while sitting at the bus stop, that I need to be more present in the world. That you cannot withdraw deep into your shell and then wonder why everyone seems so far away, and blame them for not crossing the miles of frozen trackless tundra you have put between you and them. You cannot make yourself unreachable then decry a world that cannot reach you.

You have to be there. And not just physically. You have to be mentally and emotionally present, not just peering at the world through your telescope from far, far away.

This is something I intend to work towards. And the fact that in early February, I will be going down another 5 mg in Paxil dose should only help.

The time for freezing my emotions in order to disable the anxiety is over. I need to get my emotions back, and deal with them, so I can move on.

Oh right, White Spot. I am getting there, I swear.

Well, after therapy, I had an appointment with my GP. I needed a refill on my insulin, and I needed to consult him about diabetes stuff. He has recommended that I break up my dose into two shots twelve hours apart, rather than one dose a day. The type of insulin I am using is long-lasting, but exactly how long that is varies from person to person.

So I will test and inject twice a day, and see if that is more effective. It is a lot more complicated than once a day for each, but what the hell.

After the GP, I went to White Spot, which is quite nearby, for lunch. And I really wish I had not bothered at all. So not worth it.

First of all, it was around noon, so the place was super busy. That meant both that I had to wait ten minutes for a table and that it was pretty loud in there.

And then the only table for me was a little two person table stuck in amongst four people tables, and I got stuck sitting too close (for my comfort) to this table of four fucking yuppies talking about their firms’ investment strategies and sharing bad jokes and fake laughs and I just wanted to stand up, look them right in the eye, and say “YOU ARE WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS WORLD.” and then leave.

Of course, I am way too polite to ever do something like that. They are probably fine human beings who are good to their families and who pet small animals and give regularly to charity.

But it was very grating being subjected to their conversation. And I could not avoid it, because I was only about a foot away from being at the same damned table as them.

So I felt kind of trapped in a small space as well as trapped listening to their insipid conversation.

And to compound tragedy with folly, I then stupidly ordered more fries after I was done my Carnitas Burger (sadly, not real carnitas but pulled pork), thus both ensuring I would feel floated and ill from eating too damn many fries AND sticking me with more of their stupid conversation for my audio pleasure.

After that, I caught the bus home. I had to stand part of the way, but not all, and that was good. It is amazing what I end up thinking when I am forced to ride the bus standing.

Things like “Where can all these people be GOING?!” and “Surely some of you live at this stop, right?” and “I wonder if this person would get off a stop early for a twoonie.”.

We fatties hate to stand at the best of times.

Throw in a moving bus, and it’s through tha ROOF.

See you tomorrow, people!

You know how you never see a toilet on the Starship Enterprise, or any other Starfleet vessel? Many possible answers have been posited for this, but I have always figured that they don’t need toilets because they have a system where bodily wastes are just teleported right out of your body.

I call it the Tele-port-a-potty.

And from there, it is just turned back into warp energy just like their dirty plates or other garbage. (This is TNG-era or later, obviously. Dunno where Kirk poops ended up. )

And I picture this as something that happens all the time, so nobody ever even feels the urge to go. The masses involved are so low that there is not even any noise or light from the constant teleportation.

So in a sense, everyone on a Starfleet vessel is going to the bathroom…. all the time.

Of course, this does not explain why, on extended away missions, they don’t all start cramping up. And then it would take them a while to remember what that means, and then going to the bathroom the normal way (for us) would seem incredibly disgusting and degrading.

Imagine how a modern person feels about using an outhouse, times a million.

Of course, some of them would be turned on by that…. hmmmm….

Anyhow, hi folks. Just another day of exposing all you people to my brain drippings. Thought today I would keep it loose and just lay down whatever I have around.

I am kind of curious about this notion that keeping a particular plant with two unpleasant names in your bedroom window would improve air quality.

The plant is either called a snake plant (yikes) or Mother In Law’s Tongue (YIKES), and its salient properties are that it absorbs a number of the airborne toxins that are the inevitable byproduct of our modern way of life, and it apparently gives off oxygen at night rather than taking it in.

Here is the rundown from the article :

Meattle says Mother-in-Law’s Tongue is known as “the bedroom plant.” While most plants take away oxygen at night, this one gives off oxygen at night. The plant also filters formaldehyde, trichloroethylene, xylene, toluene, and benzene from the air. Meattle recommends 6-8 waist-high plants per person for optimal output from this oxygen factory.

(Yes, the expert in the aritcle’s name is Meattle. No doubt she pronounces it to rhyme with ‘beetle’ but in my mind, it rhymes with “Seattle”)

I am always looking for things that make things fresher and nicer, so I am intrigued by this idea. Plus, I like plants. I like green things. They make a place cheerier.

But a plant would have to be pretty low maintenance to survive my absentmindedness, and so I have never gotten any for my living spaces. I figure I should not subject an innocent living creature to my inevitable accidental negligence.

Plus, I am not quite sure that we all could do with extra oxygen, let alone how much a plant produces. It sounds like the sort of thing that would work mostly by the placebo effect.

I could be wrong.

I am going to be going to my GP tomorrow, after my therapist. I am going primarily because I am out of insulin, and so I figure this is the time I am supposed to come back and check in with him about how that whole insulin thing is going.

And how is it going? Slowly. My average daily fasting (ish) blood sugar does go down as the amount of insulin I am taking goes up, but in a frustratingly slow way.

I really figured that I would never reach 40 units, but I have. I am beginning to think one shot a day is not enough, and that like others I know, I will end up having to test and inject after every meal.

Which is not that big a deal. It is a lot more hassle, and I will need to keep a lot more insulin. When I got my initial five tubes, that seemed like so much. But then, I started off at only ten units a day. I am on four times that now.

I am not too worried about missing one day’s worth of insulin. To my shame, it has happened before, by accident (just plum forgot to take it) and nothing catastrophic seemed to happen.

It will be weird to have nothing to do come 11:30 though. How quickly new things become old habits! Maybe I will inject myself with saline just to keep the habit up.

Just kidding folks… relax.

Lastly, the peerless Felicity has introduced me to the works of Jon and Al Kaplan, who have way too much fun producing musical summaries of famous movies.

To give you a taste, here is their version of John Carpenter’s The Thing (fave horror movie EVER).

It is from the point of view of the titular character. (Hee hee… titular.)

You get the idea. They are highly creative and clearly know their way around musicals as a genre. And of course, they are quite funny.

And they love, love, love Arnie. Witness Conan : The Musical…

And my current fave, Batman and Robin : The Musical, based on the excremental Joel Schumacher film.

That is a chorus that just sticks with you. “Bayitmayan.. you son of a biyich!”. Just you wait, you will be singing that in the shower soon.

I am incredibly impressed that whichever one of them does Arnie can sing on key in that accent. Especially the inarticulate Arnie noises.

I will not even think about trying to construct an onomatopoeia for those. I know when I’m licked.

Anything else? Hmmm. Guess I felt all right today. No big depression and I slept a normal amount. I am thinking maybe I should just plain eliminate caffeine from my life and see what happens.

I sm sure going to miss that sweet, sweet cola though.

See, when you start to crave something, that’s when you know it is time to stop because you are becoming addicted. And I have craved cola lately.

I suppose the other solution would be to drink cola all the time.

That strikes me as inferior, though.

Today has been a little weird. I could not sleep properly all day, despite my sleeping pill, and I felt all weird and cold and depressed inside. Managed to get a little sleep just now, and so now I feel a little bit better. Time to get to writin’.

So for this entry, I am going to give you a grab bag of links that have been hanging around my browser for a while, waiting for me to find a way to use them.

Well, leftovers make the best hash.

So here they are, in no order whatsoever.

That’s harder to achieve than it sounds.

Firstly, let’s deal with a story guaranteed to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, because it’s about love, friendly, and compassion amongst those warm and fuzzy on the outside.

It is about a cat named Pwditat (gack) who appointed herself as seeing-eye cat for a blind dog named Terfel (also gack).

Terfel was struck blind by cataracts, and spent most of his time bumping into things and had to spend most of his time in his basket.

Then one day, Terfel’s owner let a stray cat into the house (presumably figuring that a blind dog was not much of a threat to a cat) and something truly amazing happened.

The cat, whom I will call Puddy because, you recall, GACK, immediately went to Terfel’s basket and led him out into the yard. And the two have been fast friends ever since, with Puddy leading Terfel around all the time and the two even sleeping together.

As a cat lover, I find this particularly enchanting. I know cats can be quite compassionate, although not being a socially cohesive species like humans and dogs, they do not show it in the same ways, and so anti-cat people (and a lot of pro-cat people, sadly) conclude that cats are all sociopathic little assholes who don’t care about anyone but themselves.

But they do care. You just have to grok cats in order to see it. But for me, it is quite clear. Many times when I was a kid, I would be lying on the living room couch, sick, and suddenly the cats would show up to keep me company and be all sweet and cute and friendly and affectionate.

I would end up lying there surrounded by cats, and let me tell you, I felt loved.

Next thing! This video makes me angry.

Not that it isn’t funny. It is, in fact, damned funny.

What makes me mad (at myself) is that I had that exact idea for a way to make very funny content with zero production cost (all it takes is editing!), and I never did it, and now someone else has done it and it confirms the sad fact that I am a loser with brilliant ideas and no execution. Sigh!

Oh well, it is not like I am short of brilliant ideas. I get them all the time. I am just a little frustrated at my letting all these genius ideas pass through my fingers like so much sand.

I mean seriously. I need to develop at least a little follow-through some day.

Or at least I need to find some work at a think tank. I am not exactly sure what people in think tanks do, but from the outside, it seems like they pretty much just sit around and think about things and have long and detailed discussions of them and then produce impressive looking documents with their claims.

Hmmm, thinking, talking, and writing. Sounds good to me. I am good at all of those!

Like I keep telling myself in hopes it will stick, I have a lot to offer the world. I have amazing creative and intellectual skills, plus I am a heckuva nice guy, and I think that, if I could get myself properly socialized, I could have a powerful personality as well.

It is just a matter of covering the ground between me now and the me I want to be. It will not be easy, but I am making steady progress, and some day, I will grow wings and fly away.

Just need to get rid of this chain first…

Here is another really cool video. Technically, I could have saved this for Friday Science Whatever, because it does have the feel of a kickass lab demo, but meh. It’s really just about the awesome.

Wow, hot nickel in water is freaking awesome. I mean, what the hell happened there? I can’t tell if the ball of nickel is spinning, or if that is just a heat vortex swirling around it.

And how about those sound effects, huh? What the heck? Are they just a result of the heat and the water? Or is the nickel involved? They are definitely metallic type sounds, but that might just be the basin.

I can only imagine that doing this in a plastic bucket would go very wrong very fast.

And clearly, the bottom half of the nickel cools in this freaky cool upward spreading motion that I think is utterly beautiful. It looks like a cool computer demo, but it is happening right there in real life!

If I was a science teacher, I would totally be all up in that bitch right away. I would do the experiment enough times to be sure I could pull it off in class (seems simple enough, but science experiments are perverse and like to fail in public), and then it would just be a matter of figuring out how to work it into the curriculum.

“Today, class, we are going to learn about the laws of thermodynamics in relation to metals heated to molten…. aw, fuck it. You kids like Mythbusters? Then watch this, it’ll be AWESOME. ”

OK, maybe not that last part. But god damn it, that would be one day the kids would remember.

And honestly, the first duty of every teacher is to get their goddamned attention.

Seeya later folks!

My dream world continues to gather energy and produce manifold weirdnesses.

Like this bit of freaky cool stuff. First, read this news story about what gay rights activist Michaelangelo Signorile did when he and his boyfriend got some verbal abuse from a random homophobe.

Basically, this asshole saw Signorile and his boyfriend share a peck-on-the-cheek goodbye kiss and said it was “disgusting”. So what Signorile and associates did was point at the guy and shout “Homophobe!” and “Bigot!” and draw attention to what an asshole the guy was, and chased him out of the neighborhood with his tail between his legs.

Oh, and this all happened in the New York City neighborhood of Chelsea, which is apparently super gay. So this reprehensible person called a very chaste male-male kiss disgusting in what is basically Gay City, New York.

Obviously, I totally love this. This is exactly how we all should deal with this kind of thing now, both us fags and our straight allies. When someone shouts something homophobic, just point at them and scream “BIGOT” and bring the powerful force of public shame down on their heads.

And we can totally do this now. The tipping point is long past. We have historical momentum on our side. People are way more embarrassed by being thought to be a bigot than we are of being queer. We have the power and I think we should use it to hasten the marginalization of these people.

Chase them into the closet. Then lock the goddamned door.

Okay, so that is the setup. Learn it, love it, then keep it in mind as I explain a dream I had last night.

In the dream, I was on a city bus, in that sort of in-between mode I sometimes lapse into when I am on transit where I am thinking about nothing, when I noticed that nearby were seated, on the same bench, two guy who were obviously a couple and three young smartass types.

They were seated like this, with G for Gay Guy and S for Smartass.

(G1) (G2) (S1) (S2) (S3)

As I watch, S1 starts making fun of G1 and G2, and starts punching G2 on the shoulder and saying something like “You faggots, huh? You a couple of queers? Answer me, you gay piece of shit!”

Hearing this, I silently rise from my seat and glide over to the scene of the abuse. I have not even consciously decided to intervene, but the protective urge has risen in me and its powerful chemistry is making my blood start to boil.

When S1 sees me coming, he falls silent and turns white. He’s just a small guy, and I am… not. And I am told I am pretty scary when in this state of mind.

Plus, you know, fuck it, it’s a dream and I’m the star.

I am not one hundred percent sure what happened next, but I know I said, softly but firmly, in a voice of velvet backed by iron, “Is there a problem here?”. And I was looking right at S1, the ringleader, when I said it. He looked uncomfortable.

Then, some lost time. But after that, I remember I was addressing everyone in the bus, asking them if they had any problem with the two gentlemen in question, to which the answer was a resounding NO!

And then I looked at S1 the ringleader and told him to “sit down and SHUT the FUCK UP. ” And the other bus passengers all cheered, and I went back to my seat.

See the similarity? And I dreamed all this before I read a single line of the Signorile story. Was I surfing the waves of the zeitgeist, somehow picking up the emanations of this story from the collective unconscious while I shared the ocean with all the other dreamers of the world?

Or was it just an interesting but ultimately meaningless coincidence? I don’t know. My faith in coincidence has never been all that strong.

Oh, and not that this is relevant to the more mystical aspect of this whole thing, but last night, before sleeping, I watched the movie Sid and Nancy with my dear friend, that quintessence of beauty and grace, the darling Miss Felicity Walker.

In that movie, a great deal of the end of the film takes place at the cheap hotel room where Sid and Nancy lived out their tragic final days.

The name of the hotel? The Chelsea.

Where did the Sognorile story take place? Chelsea.

Freaky stuff, huh? I make no claims of mystical connection or magical abilities. How could I? I don’t believe in either mysticism or magic.

But I do believe in the collective unconscious, although I am not at all sure what its actual physical mechanism might be. Pheromones, maybe? We understand so little of what they transmit.

I also believe that what seems like premonition might just be extremely advanced pattern recognition operating on such a deep level that the conscious mind can’t encompass its operation and so all the conscious mind gets is the results.

After all, adults seem like they have precognitive powers to children, when they simply have more knowledge, intelligence, and understanding of the world. Who says that stops in adulthood? Maybe some adults have an intuitive grasp of the world that is as far above the average as an adult’s is above that of a child.

Also, I have to note that when I had my dream, the events in the Signorile story had already happened. I just did not know about them yet.

So it is not so much “precognition” so much as “knowledge acquired by unusual means”.

All very mysterious. Oh well, maybe this article published today on Cracked.com about weird things that influence your dreams has the answer.

Coincidence? Yeah, probably. None of those seem to apply to my situation, after all.

But still, I do wonder what this brain of mine is plugged into sometimes.

The ways of wizards are strange indeed.

I have had a shitty day. Lots of sleep and sweat and dreams, and each time, I wake up feeling crappier. My head hurts, I feel weak and dizzy, I ache all over, and to be perfectly honest, right now, I feel so cranky that I could just fucking scream.

But what the hell. Time to get the writing done. After that, I can go back to being miserable in peace. And as it happens, I have had some pretty darn interesting dreams in my wanderings through the steamy fetid jungle swamps of my mind, and what the hell, I will write them down as best I can today.

In the first on, I was The Kingpin’s boyfriend. For reals, man. I dreamed that I was romantically entangled with a fictional character, and for some reason, my brain chose The Kingpin.

As I recall it, the dream happened in extremely compressed fashion, almost in fast-forward, with interludes happening one after another, nothing more than ten seconds long, each representing another section of time.

Kind of like a training montage, but with more gay nudity.

Yes, there was a slice where he and I were nude in bed together. No actual sex, but it was sexy, and very snuggly. I felt quite cozy and happy. I think it was during this interlude that I had the thought that it was nice to be with someone so big.

After all, being a big fella myself, it has been a long time since I had the comforting feeling of being in the arms of someone bigger than me.

Actually, I am not sure that has ever happened to me. Sadness.

And it made me feel safe. That is not something I have felt since I was a little boy. Also sadness.

The other part of the dream that I remember clearly was one where I was explaining to him that I really wanted to be useful to him. Not just a lover but a partner, I suppose, or an assistant.

Now that is something I don’t know that I have ever felt : useful. I have spent what seems like my entire life feeling useless and worthless and good for nothing and just a burden to others.

So it says something that I was so keen to prove I could be useful to my new benefactor. It means that, at least in the dream, I thought I could prove my worth to someone.

And I think I could, really. I have a lot to offer. I am sharp as hell plus I have a winning personality (well, some of the time) and I am extremely creative.

It is just that I need someone to serve, I guess. Someone to support me so I can support them. I lack the strength of character to focus my talents myself.

The second dream, I ended up having a long conversation with John Stewart.

No mystery there. He is someone I consider a personal hero, someone I admire and envy and idolize. So if my superconscious was going to pick a figure for me to tell my life story to and try to justify my life to, in a way, it totally makes sense that it was him.

What the deal was with The Kingpin, I don’t know. A powerful fat guy, I guess.

I don’t recall exactly what happened in the dream leading up to this, but at some point, I was trying to get somewhere, and had just been abandoned by my friends. They had even done that dickish thing where they slow down the vehicle like they are going to let you get in, then speed away laughing.

Don’t worry, my real world friends, none of you were there. It was generic friends. Plus, I think the vehicle might have been a firetruck, whatever that means.

So anyhow, I was feeling rather low, and then there is John Stewart just sitting in a field. As I approach him, he gets up, and it seems to me that he looks very purposeful, like he is about to do something he had been waiting to do and which he took seriously but was not exactly looking forward to doing.

That was, apparently, talking to me. I am such a chore.

But he listened very intently as I told him about my crappy childhood and how I felt so trapped in my current life and how people say “Do what you want to do!” like it is a big liberation, but that kinda shit takes money. Sure, give me a couple million dollars, I will do what I want to do for the rest of my life.

The dream ended just as he was about to give me advice. I guess my metaconcious mind was not up to that.

Then in the third dream, I was in a large vehicle, maybe a limo, with some frankly pretty snobby people. They made some catty remarks about some huge woman in an ugly dress, and then someone said “Wait, what if that’s not a woman?”, and I looked, and there was this six foot four trannie in a cheap print dress walking on the street.

We all laugh at her (not proud) but then there she is, at the car door next to me, trying to get in. She opens the door and try to sit next to me, but I say, truthfully, that we are packed in really tight in here and there is no way she will fit in.

Nevertheless, she insists upon trying to get in, and ends up sort of slithering over people’s laps, and I am tempted to just shove her out the door because she is being quite rude and presumptuous and I would have every right to forcibly eject her.

But I don’t, and that is where the dream ends.

I can’t help but wonder what having a big trannie trying to get into my car means.

All in all, while the sleep made me feel crappy, I am glad the dreams were interesting!

The head on my shoulders, that is. Today has been super damned sleepy, which is unpleasant and a pain in the ass besides. But I am trying not to let it get me down.

I am not surprised at this turn of events. I have been having trouble sleeping for the last two or three days. The “famine” part of my “feast or famine” sleep schedule, no doubt. Sigh.

Again, I think caffeine is a trigger. I had not had any for days, and thus, I am guessing, I was able to “dry out” and stop needing so much damned sleep. But last night, at Denny’s, I had my usual Diet Coke with my meal and whaddaya know, super sleepy day today.

I have decided to completely ignore the whole issue of being addicted to sleep or whether I need to sleep or just want to sleep for now. When I am sleepy, I will sleep. Period. I am confident that I will eventually reach a point where I am done sleeping and I couldn’t nap even if I wanted to nap.

That was how I felt on Thursday and Friday. Sure, maybe a few times, I might have wanted to escape reality by sleeping. But I couldn’t. I was just all out of real sleepiness. I could lay down for maybe an hour and a half and get to maybe the very lightest level of sleep and that was it.

So I was forced to actually deal with the day, and fill my time somehow. It did not, alas, result in me getting much that was useful done, but if I can keep pushing myself towards that state of mind, I am sure I will get bored enough with the usual fucking around to want to do something different.

And that is when I will, God willin’ and the crick don’t rise, I will, as a last resort, do useful things besides writing on this here blog of mine.

Writing this thing is quite useful to me. It helps me keep my writing muscles toned, and it provides me with an outlet for my thoughts and feelings. I am still learning to harness the totality of what I need to express to the yoke of the written word, but in many ways, that is a writer’s life journey.

And seeing as I am pushing 40, I rather think it is time I got working on that whole writing thing in a serious and determined way.

Wah, not fun. But could lead to lots more fun, fun in the form of money. Yay money!

I have so much trouble focusing my energies! So afraid of having to make things real. That whole “not wanting to leave the safety of my skull” kind of thing. A real problem, that.

Reality has so much good stuff in it. And it makes you work so hard and do such scary tricky things to get the good stuff, too. Why can’t I just get it for being so darn special?

But nooo, they keep wanting me to do things, and doing things is hard. No fair!

Seriously though, I do want to exit this icy mire of inaction. But I have the sad feeling that I will have to bail out more of my backed up emotional sewage before that becomes any easier.

At least, that is the only way I know of to reduce the paralytic fear of reality that is the main thing holding me back. I can wank all over the place forever about other little sub-problems of my tempestuous and tormented mindscape, but all threads lead back to that main problem : fear of the world outside my head. (And fear of the world inside it, too. Like I said, it’s… complicated. )

But I am working on just plain accepting more of who I am, what I am, and where I am at this point in life. I am trying to teach myself to view my life as fun and lazy and self-indulgent and not too hard without totally tapping out of reality or becoming a completely worthless person.

But hey, even if I am never a bestselling author, I will have at least learned to enjoy my worthless existence more, and that is something to think about.

As I have said before, the whole self-loathing thing has not proved effective at propelling me towards stardom. I am not the sort of person whose inner demons make them ravenously ambitious and push them towards ever higher levels of achievement and success.

I hope to be that kind of person some day, honestly. But right now, my inner demons do not goad me so much as tie me down and sit on me and lock my head into one of those Clockwork Orange viewing chairs and convince me that there is nothing outside this sad little life of mine.

Or rather, that this sad little life of mine is all I am capable of achieving in life, and that I should be glad for it and not try for anything more, because I won’t get and I will just end up worse off than before and cursing myself for ever having tried.

Like I said : Complicated.

I get the feeling that if something happened that forced me to deal with reality, I would go through a profound crisis of the soul, but perhaps I would emerge from said crisis with a more stable and strong personality, illusions burned away, focus gained by trial by fire.

Or maybe my entire psyche would collapse, and I would become completely catatonic, and spend the rest of my life as a drooling vegetable in the back ward of some ill-funded loony bin, collecting bedsores and being casually abused by giant orderlies without even being mentally present enough to enjoy it.

But maybe that is not me talking, but those evilly persuasive demons of mind once more convincing me that there is only this life, and disaster.

I really hate those little fuckers.

So, as I predicted, I am not quite so grumpy or angry now, although I know I am way, way far away from actually having vented all my pent up rage steam.

I am just on the cool-down cycle now, and I am sure this little volcano of mine will erupt again soon enough. For now, I will just enjoy the downtime.

Today was a therapy day, and it was a decent session. I am coming to understand that there will always be a feeling of dissatisfaction after a session because there will always be so much more I want to talk about than can be fit into an hour of talk therapy.

Plus, I seem to always suffer from an esprit d’escalier variant where I think of all the things I should have brought up during the session in the minutes after the session ends.

While I am there, of course, I can’t think of a damned thing. This is similar to the problem I have had in the past of drawing a total blank when someone asks me what I want for Xmas or my bday. I would know damned well that there were tons of things I wanted, but at the time, I could not think of a thing.

Of course, after the opportunity has passed, I am thinking “D’oh! I should have asked for this, and this, and this, and of course this…. ”

This year for Xmas, at least, I managed to conquer that problem by focusing in on three things I knew I needed (shoes, shirts, and gloves) and fixing them in my mind with such intense concentration that it was like I was trying to memorize my serial number in a WWII film.

So I was damned ready this time. There are probably innumerable other things I could have asked for. Some of them I might even have enjoyed more than those three things.

But I don’t care. Part of fighting my constant option paralysis is to just make peace with hasty, arbitrary, imperfect decisions.

You just have to cut off the decision making process at a certain point and go with whatever seems best at that very moment, and stick with it.

Obviously, this only applies to things where a decision is needed at a certain time. But you know, seeing as we all have a bare three score and ten (if we’re lucky) on this Earth, there is really no such thing as unlimited time in which to make a decision.

Just pick something and get on with it, and stop using indecision as a refuge against growing up.

It’s not that you cannot decide. It’s that decision leads to action, and action leads to exposure, and exposure leads to pain and fear (in your mind), so you refuse to decide.

Then, all you have to do is keep saying “I could never decide… ” and you are safe from having to actually do anything, and cower in the shelter of the potential rather than face your fear of the actual.

After all, dealing with reality means leaving the safe (and poisonous) world inside your mind.

And that is literally the worst thing ever. Even worse than never leaving it at all.

Well, maybe it’s a tie.

It was super freaking cold out today, and due to the sort of scheduling chaos that always happens when Joe goes back to work before the kiddies go back to school, he could drop me off at therapy but could not pick me up and drive me home after.

And I was not looking forward to going back via bus in such cold weather. My gloves have yet to arrive, plus I totally did not expect it to be so cold so I was not wearing anything but a thin white T-shirt on under my leather jacket, so I was not prepared for the quarter mile (or so) walk from my therapist’s office to the bus stop, then waiting for the 407, then taking the 407 to Richmond Center, then walking three blocks to the stop for the 401, then waiting for THAT bus, then taking that bus home.

Luckily, Joe, being the local node of total awesomeness that he is, spotted me $20 toward a cab, so I was able to ride home in comfort and it only cost me five bucks out of pocket.

God, taxis are expensive around here. Back home, I could get anywhere in town for $3.25. If taxis were that cheap here, I would get out a hell of a lot more.

Still, it was nice to take a taxi home. Makes me feel less poor for a while, and supports my dreamy dreams of having enough money to live the life of comfort, luxury, and ease to which I aspire.

I am not looking for status or power or fame. (Well, OK, I really want the fame). But still, what I want the most is things like a car and driver, a nice house with comfy and attractive furnishings, and enough pocket money to eat at nice restaurants and go see shows, visit museums, and so on.

I do not care whose name is on my clothing as long as it is good looking and comfortable. (Emphasis on the comfortable. ) I do not care what the neighbors think as long as they leave me alone to be the friendly weirdo that I am. I do not care whether society approves of me, although it would be nice if they liked me at least a little.

I just want a comfortable, easy, pleasant life.

I figure the sort of life I want would cost around $200K a year. That is not chicken feed but it is not entirely out of the question either.

I am sure J. K. Rowling spends that much on lunch, and she is, of course, my hero, financially speaking.

She became a billionaire by writing! That’s billionaire with a B!

I think we can all agree that we would all like to have that kind of cash.

Now if only I can convince the world that Trevor and Pep are the next big thing…

I decided that I would pause the recent rant-fest to slow myself down and just share some links with you nice people tonight.

Don’t get me wrong, I am still uptight and angry and ranty feeling, but I am saving it up for therapy tomorrow and so tonight, I will do my best to go back to being my usual affable and harmless self for the duration of one friendly link sharing blog entry and then, presumably, it will be Grumpy Time again.

Or who knows, maybe after I vent to my therapist tomorrow, I will be all smoothed out and mellow once again.

Either way, I am at least glad that I am getting in touch with the deep anger and experiencing it, because that is the only way to make it go away for good.

Anyhow, on with the lynx links.

First up, we have an interesting bit about a fellow who suffered a stroke and woke up speaking Welsh.

A fellow named Alun Morgan is the center of our tale. 81 years old, he grew up in England and had only spent a few months of his life in Wales, and that, during World War II.

But when he was struck down by a stroke, he came back up speaking fluent Welsh, a language he had never consciously learned except for a few words to get by in his short stay in Wales seventy years ago.

He was, however, exposed to the language, both when he was in Wales as a boy, and possibly when he has heard his wife speaking it. So it is not quite a miracle.

But it does show how the human brain is an amazing machine. Clearly, his absorbed the Welsh language in the same way a child absorbs its native language, without conscious comprehension, and stored it away, ready to suddenly be brought online as an emergency backup language when Alan’s primary language of English was temporarily offline.

He reports that he woke up not only speaking Welsh, but having no idea that he was speaking anything but English. Clearly, it was functioning as his primary language at the time. Fascinating.

Next up, a little soothing eye candy from the world of reverse entropy.

Fireworks in reverse is strangely beautiful. I would not have guessed that. I would have assumed that each firework is such a brief and ephemeral thing that it would look around the same backwards and forwards.

And maybe that would be true in the era before digital video. But with the clarity and frame rate of digital video, we can see that fireworks played backwards is quite pretty, actually, in that eerie “suspended from reality” way that all backwards video is pretty.

I remember being spellbound (and enormously entertained) when a teacher, to fill time after showing us a health and nutrition film, played it again, backwards.

Let me tell you, watching people eat backwards is top rate entertainment when you are eight years old. The redheaded boy eating spaghetti backwards was a particularly big hit.

And speaking of freaky visual experiences, you might want to take a gander at this.

It is an anti “Bath Salts” PSA done by the US Navy, and the first couple of minutes are a rather gripping reenactment of what a “Bath Salts” trip might just be like.

Feel free to stop watching after the “waking up screaming on a gurney” part. The dude talking in the quiet monotone about just what nasty shit “Bath Salts” are is nowhere near as entertaining as the lovely trip through a psychotic state at the beginning.

It combines two of my favorite things, first person film-making and totally fucked up head trips.

To imagine that people are willingly taking a drug that stands a good chance of making them (hopefully) temporarily psychotic (or if you prefer, schizophrenic) really bakes my own personal noodle. I can only assume that the people still taking this drug are either tragically uninformed in general, or young and stupid and therefore sure that something like that can’t happen to them.

Or, well, extreme escapists who are willing to do anything to escape their current mental state, period. I can relate to that, as foolish as it might be.

Sometimes, it is hard to imagine anything being worse than how you feel right now.

But things can always get worse. Remember that, kids.

And speaking of kids, here is the story of one poor girl named Courtni Webb who got suspended from school for daring to write a poem claiming she understood why people like Adam Lanza go nuts and kills people.

She was even threatened with expulsion, and shamed in front of her entire community, making it look like she was some sort of ticking time bomb that brave administrators had defused in the nick of time.

This is the price you pay for daring to empathize with those society hates. The girl was not saying the Sandy Hook shooter’s actions were justified, she was just saying she understood. And don’t we want to understand why these people do these things?

In order to prevent such tragedies, some of us will have to be willing to go to the dark places of the human mind and try to understand what makes people like Adam Lanza tick.

But no, some hysterical teacher had to punish an innocent student for daring to express her opinion because, after all, someone has to do something.

I particularly identify with this story, because that sounds like exactly the sort of thing that I would have written if I was in school during this age of mass shootings.

Maybe I should go back to writing poetry some day. Sure, there’s no money in it, but what the hell.

Although to be honest, I am glad the meme of school shootings was not around when I was a depressed teen.

There are a few bullies I might have taken down with my Dad’s .22 rifle before they stopped me.

Good God, another year.

And an ugly one to boot. 2013? Triskadecaphobia aside, That is just a homely looking number. It has that “crude prime” feel to it. Inelegantly indivisible. 2012 was such an elegant looking year by comparison. 2011, not so much. And 2010 was divisible but in a silly, obvious way.

2014 will be a little better, at least.

So what do I have to look forward to this year? Precious little. More slow decline of health, more diffident circling inside my fishbowl, more listless and futile attempts to write my way out of this box.

Did I mention I am not in a very good mood?

Because I’m not.

Oh, and the big thing to dread this year : turning 40. As of May the 19th this year, I will have been on this dirtball for 40 inglorious years of doing little and accomplishing less.

I am not looking forward to that. In fact, I am dreading it more than I have ever dreaded anything before, and that includes major surgery and trips to the principal’s office.

Technically, logically, it will be a day like any other. But we human beings cannot help but invest great emotional importance to these milestone years, and I claim no exemption. The thought of turning forty with a life that is more or less exactly as crappy as it was when I was 30 and most of my 20’s makes me want to hide under the covers until the end of time.

If I ignore the passage of time for long enough, it has to go away, right?

Or I will. One way or the other.

From the fact that I am in a shitty mood, you can safely deduce that I have slept all day, dreaming restless and unsettled (yet inconclusive) dreams, and it has left me feeling downright grumpy.

But you know what? That is okay. I give myself permission to feel like crap and be grumpy and hard to deal with now and then. Everybody gets out of sorts sometimes, why not me? To what sort of sainthood am I aspiring when I try to be the Guy Who Is Never Even A Little Testy?

You can do yourself a lot of damage by trying not to be human. By refusing to accept that you, like all others, are imperfect and weak and flawed and vulnerable and, at times, even absurd.

Better to just accept your flawed and imperfect humanity, and through that, accept and understand others as well. They have not failed you.

They are merely human after all.

I still have no plans to take out my grumpy moods on others. That is something I cannot accept. Perhaps this is an necessary ethos of the very emotionally sensitive, but I see making other people feel worse in order to make yourself feel better to be about the worst crime there is, at least on a personal level.

And because sensitive people tend to be attracted to one another, there is no chance that the people in my life could just brush off my foul moods. We are all too fragile for that. I know in my heart that it would hurt them as much as the same would hurt me, and thus, I abstain. I refrain. I repress.

But there must be way to let this nasty, angry shit out without hurting others. I refuse to believe that my options are limited to either being evil or being depressed.

There must be a third path.

At least I am acknowledging my frustration and rage now. And not in a clinical, detached, aloof way, like I am being my own therapist.

I am letting it come up and truly feeling it, and that feels like progress to me. You cannot deal with unresolved emotions via pure logical and common sense, and you are a fool to think you can. Emotional problems require emotional solutions. You have to be willing to feel things in order to be free.

Otherwise, it is like you are tied to a central point like a dog tied up in its back yard, and no matter how far you wander, you will never get further than the end of your chain.

But you can fool yourself, if you like, to thinking you have all the world to explore. After all, you go someplace different every day, right? And you can start at 12 o’clock at the end of your chain, and walk all around the circle clockwise, and as long as you don’t try too hard to memorize where you have been, it is a lot like you are always going someplace new.

After all, if you have forgotten what 12 o’clock was like by the time you reach 11 again, then it is almost like you are not even really stuck… right?

But you are stuck, and the area of your life is very small. Sad, really.

The real growth comes from pulling up that stake, taking off that collar, or at the very least, making that damned chain a few links longer.

That is the hard part, the scary part, the risky part. The part that requires sacrifice of yourself. The part that requires actually changing things, not for play play, but for real real.

That is the stumbling block for an awful lot of people. They want to change everything without changing anything. They want their lives to get better without the scariness of being new and different. They want to get everything they want without giving up anything they already have.

And life just plain does not work that way. You cannot hold on to everything you have if you expect to get what you really want. The real world requires letting go, not for its own sake, but for gain.

You have to make profitable trades. Give up what you want less for what you want more. That is the only way to get ahead.

Otherwise, you end up clinging to junk rather than trading for gold.

So what am I willing to let go, you ask?

Damn near everything.

Fuck it all.