This came up on Facebook recently. and it turns out I had a lot of say about it as it pertains to yours truly, so here goes.

When you feel helpless and powerless as a child, it keeps you from progressing emotionally. You never get to the independent exploration phase of development and instead are arrested at the stage were you attract, reward, and keep a caretaker.

Usually this is a parent or guardian. But really, anyone will do. The important thing is that to you, independent survival is impossible. You know that, like an infant, if you are left to your down devices, you will die.

So what you end up doing is developing your charm, your appeal, your displays of haplessness, and your ability to reward a potential caretaker via a smile. gratitude, cuteness, or what have you.

This is an inherently weak position because all your power is indirect and accessible only through others, and they might cut you off at any moment. So you are constantly singing for your supper. You are always trying to be the most bright and appealing and rewarding person you can be so that you can hold your caretaker(s) attention.

Failure means abandonment, and abandonment means death.

The problem is that if you have investing so heavily on appearing helpless in order to attract and keep a caretaker,. any progress towards independence and autonomy sets off massive anxiety alarms because if you can do things for yourself, the caretaker might abandonment, and abandonment equals death.

Worse than death. Oblivion.

This is a massive hindrance to any attempt to get better. If fundamentally, deep down, you do not believe you could survive on your own, then threatening your relationship with your caretaker(s) is unthinkable.

Better to stay weak and therefore appealing.

Even if it means never getting to grow up.

And the thing is, logically, I know that I could do the individual tasks that I have mostly left to roommates for my adult life.

Paying bills and paying rent are trivial challenges.

I know more or less how to clean house. Taking out the garbage and so on, no biggie.

So objectively speaking, I could totally live on my own and do my own thing. But when I so much as gingerly brush up against the though, this howling maelstrom of ice cold anxiety the size of Kentucky blows through me and freezes that thought in place.

And then I have no choice but to stop thinking about it. And so nothing ever changes.

And it’s a pretty humiliating thing to realize that you have, on some levels, remained a big brained infant for your whole life and you are 46.

47 in May.

But clearly. this is something I am going to have to confront and overcome if I ever want to escape this dead end cage of a life of mine and get to be a real person for a change.

And the only way out that I can see is to somehow convince my deepest self that abandonment is not oblivion and that I can do just fine on my own, without anyone to use as a barrier between me and the cold hard world.

It’s not going to be easy.

But I know I can do it.

More after the break.

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On social reward

At quite an early age, I figured out what social reward was and how it worked.

A social reward is one that is strictly interpersonal. It might be a pat on the back. recognition for a job well done, a warm smile, heartfelt thanks, or any other emotional reward given by one person to another without any material or pragmatic exchange.

It’s definitely a reward in all relevant ways. The reward center of the recipient’s brain is activated. They are now motivated to repeat the experience. Neural pathways have been reinforced. In all senses, reward has happened.

And yet, the giver lost nothing. In a sense, they get the benefits of a more tangible reward without having to pay for it.

To me, this is beautiful.

For one thing, like sex, it completely bypasses zero-sum transactional thinking. All involve parties benefit and nobody loses anything.

It isn’t even a trade. Nothing is exchanged. It only exists in the world of emotion.

You know, like love.

And because of that, social rewards are intrinsically… well, intrinsic. And as we all know, intrinsic rewards are far more motivating than extrinsic ones, whether you are talking about shoveling the driveway for an old person who always thanks you warmly or going off to war to prove that you’re a man.

Another great thing about social reward is that it’s something everyone has to give. I had very little power as a kid (see above) but I had a smile.

One caveat : this particular form of reward does favor those who can project their emotions. A very closed off and inexpressive person does not reward people socially.

It’s easy to imagine a scenario where two people do identical favours, and one gets a warm and genuine thanks and the other doesn’t even get acknowledged, and it is easy to see which one is more likely to get future favours from the same person.

And yet, I feel like this largely flies under the radar in modern culture. We are so caught up in the transactional model that everything else gets swept under the rug, and when things like social reward are brought to people’s attention, there is a very strong tendency to say it “doesn’t count” for one reason or another.

But it totally does. It might not be quantifiable or tangible, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real. It results in very real labour and behaviours.

It just doesn’t fit our usual way of looking at things.

And like I said, sex can be the exact same way. Two people get together and do something both of them enjoy and nobody had to “win” or “lose” anything.

If only everything could be so simple and pure.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

It’s Wednesday, comedy tonight, anxiety attack, aaaaaa, gonna troll Facebook for material and see what I come up with, yadda yadda yadda,

Honestly, I am not sure I even should go, because I am still sick and I have no idea what it is. I could take it back to my GP but he’s frigging useless.

After I eat, I will try to spray – I assume it’s a broncial dilator of some sort – that he gave me and see if it makes me feel better.

The symptoms themselves are not that severe. In fact, other than the raw and scratchy feeling in my lungs and throat, I am actually feeling pretty good.

Must be the sunshine. Sunshine cheers me up, at least some of the time.

I really should get some full spectrum bulbs for the lights in my bedroom. Might do me a world of good.

But real full spectrum bulbs, not regular old light bulbs labeled “full spectrum” because they produce white light and white technically contains all colors, so….

I want something that recreates actual sunshine to the highest degree of accuracy possible. I want something that could theoretically tan me.

It should be good enough to kill vampires, is what I am saying.

If it meant I would always feels as good as I do now, it would be worth it. Woot!

---

Tried out that game Tyranny.

The bad news is that it its, actually, the bleak and amoral game I tried before. It takes place in a fantasy universe where the super-powerful evil wizard has actually defeated the heroes and mostly won. All that is left is this area called the Tiers, which are natural shelves on the side of a mountain.

Which is a rather nifty setup for there being a lot of little kingdoms close together. After all, you might be the lord of Tier 3 but have no real contact with Tier 2 or Tier 4, and Tier 1 and Tier 5 are mere theories if that.

Your character in the game is an up and coming officer in the evil wizard’s army. And these are not nice people. Neither are you.

So technically, you’re evil too. But this time through, I think I have sussed out this game’s game. On paper you are evil, but you don’t actually do evil things. They have left just enough wiggle room in your actual actions that the player can tell themselves they aren’t so much evil as they are a product of a very, very severe culture.

This makes me willing to go further in the plot of the game than I did before so I can see if eventually you use your skills to become a badass rebel of some sort and take down the evil wizard and his wicked empire.

Or at least get to be harsh but fair.

If the game was truly the moral oblivion it pretends to be, I would have no use for it. But so far at least, I have enough leeway that I can avoid doing anything too evil.

Plus I have a second playthrough of Divinity : Original Sin 2 on the go.

And I am still on the lookout for my Next Big game.

So what I am saying is, I got options.

More after the break.

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Did comedy. Went fine.

Right now, the most important thing is that I am working on my particular style. And I am beginning to get an idea of what that style looks like.

Basically, I want to be having a conversation with the audience. Not literally…. I am not nearly ready for audience work yet.

But I want my tone to be intimate and chatty, like the audience and I are buddies catching up with one another.

I also want to good at a high but relaxed speed. It helps keep density and momentum up, and helps to channel some of my nervousness into comedy.

One of the secrets of comedy is that you can turn all that nervous energy into presence, persona, brightness of affect, and so on.

All comedians are a bag of twisted neuroses fighting like cats on the inside. The successful ones are the ones who make that work for them.

So far, so good.

And I have decided that I am cool with writing the jokes Wednesday afternoon. I write the jokes, then I perform them, and that’s what I do on Wednesdays.

And that works for me. It means I don’t have a lot of time to worry and fret over the jokes or to work myself into a frenzy of anxiety over show time.

Dammit. I need to lay down for a bit. I will be back by 11 pm.

---

And now I feel haunted again. Thanks, nap.

But you know what? Fuck feelings. I’m sick and tired of their bullshit. I wish there was a way I could cut through all the garbage and noise in my head and get some fucking peace and quiet and stability for once.

Instead I have this roaring void in my head 24/7 that generates the icy col wind constantly punishing my naked flesh without respite or restraint.

And I want out. But there is no “out”. There is no escaping this constant mental bullshit. The best I can do is distract myself for a while with video games and food and hanging with the fuzzies. Keep my mind too busy to notice how fucking cold it is all the time.

How i long to be a real, live, functional human being. To finally come in from the cold and warm myself up by the fire and just fucking relax for a change.

Instead, the best I can do is thaw myself little by little, a teacup’s worth at a time, and a glacier’s worth left to go.

And I am so god damned tired of it all. I want to come home. I want to feel safe. I want to be somewhere where I am loved and cherished and valued and validated.

Instead, I am left out in the cold, as always.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Well I finally did it. I beat Divinity : Original Sin 2.

And I did, in fact, get to actually become Divine. Technically.

In the plot, I actually did rise to Godhood. But the burning question of “how the hell would they write that?” was never really answered.

I rose to Godhood, I had some dialogues with the main characters on our living ship, the Lady Vengeance, then there was the always reliable ending where I got to find out what happened to various characters, then roll credits.

And when I was on the ship, absolutely nothing about my character had changed besides having a glowy aura now.

I mean, it didn’t even level me up. What a ripoff.

They even seemed to go out of their way to not give me any satisfaction on that score by ending the ending sequence with the narrator saying something like “And what about you? What did you do with your divine powers? Were you just cruel? Good or evil? Only you know for sure. ”

Which got an instant and instinctual middle finger from me.

Pfff. Cowards. Don’t invoke epic ideas if you can’t handle them, assholes.

Don’t start what you can’t finish.

Still, amazing game. After hundreds of hours of gameplay, I could not come to any other conclusion without seeming like a total hypocrite.

“Oh sure, I played this game for over 500 hours, but it was pretty meh. Three stars. ”

It would be like those people who say they have seen every episode of a certain TV show ten times and so they know that without a doubt, the show sucks.

Thank you for your sacrifice.

I will likely at least start another playthrough. I always do. It helps take the sting out of the post-completion blues that strikes all gamers after they beat a game. Sure, there is the feeling of triumph at having overcome another game, and there is the satisfaction of a job well done and a journey completed, but once that fades it becomes the Boxing Day Blues all over again.

But I don’t know how far into playing the game again I will go. I could go either way. The game is certainly deep, long, and rich enough to support another playthrough. I could choose a different main character (one that doesn’t die so much, maybe) and follow their plotline. Maybe make some custome characters this time to fill out my party.

I’m pretty sure I can do that.

But I could also see myself deciding to retire the game for now and movie on to something new. I just acquired Warhammer : Vermintide 2, and have yet to give it a try. So it could be that I will end up playing it instead of DOS2.

But even if I end up hating and returning WV2, it feels good to know that I have an extremely playable game in DOS2 to rely on to keep me busy whilst I search for my next game obsession.

More after the break.

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Well this sucks. I’m sick.

Got a chest full of pain. My lungs feel very raw and scratchy inside and I can feel something in there – not phlegm, it’s not heavy or liquid enough, but still something that should not be there.

My throat is swollen too, and swallowing hurts a bit. I feel feverish and deadly tired. I have a mild headache from sinus pressure. And my appetite is shot.

I know I have to eat, but I am really not looking forward to it.

Truth is, it’s been building up for a couple of days. I have just been subconsciously ignoring it until now. I suppose I was in denial. But now the symptoms are too obvious to be ignored any more.

And I know that sooner or later, I am going to have to look up the symptoms of the corona virus. I don’t want to, but I have to.

Because my contracting it is just plausible enough to be a possibility. After all, I live smack dab in the middle of one of the largest Chinese populations outside of Mainland China, and the airport is just a couple of miles away.

It’s entirely possible that travelers from the Wuhan area arrived here in Richmond and decided to go visit their friends in Manhattan Towers, where I live.

Or that I shared air with some when I ate at White Spot on Sunday night.

The odds are still pretty low, but I have to know.

I’mma get some food now. Urk.

---

I’ve managed to scare up a tiny bit of appetite. Hope it’s enough.

I have now tried Warhammer : Vermintide 2, and right now it is not looking like a keeper. Turns out it doesn’t have a plot, just missions. The idea is to do missions, get money, buy better gear, lather, rinse, repeat.

Not much meat on that bone, especially compared to DOS2 which had oodles of plot. The combat seems fun and all, but meh.

Oh, plus it’s squad-based, even in single player. So double meh. I will likely return it and go look for something more to my tastes.

OR I could install and play one of the over 100 games I have in my Steam library,. Ironically, I had to uninstall everything but DOS2 in order to have the HD space to download and installed Vermintide 2.

I’m sure there must be something worth playing in there. I haven’t played Witcher 3 in a long time, and that’s my fave PC game ever.

Hmmm. Or there’s this game called Tyranny which I completely do not remember trying but there it is, in my Steam Library. It’s by Obsidian Entertainment, which is a solid company, and I think it’s an open world overhead perspective game a lot like DOS2.

I had been hoping for something 3D but this is good too.

Then again, I could always install Skyrim again.

Right now, my desire to find out what new stuff has been added since I played it last is equal to my enormous superstitious fear of losing myself in it again.

Intellectually, I know that I am probably strong enough now to get into it without getting in so deep that I stop eating.

But emotionally I am freaking terrified.

So I will download and try this Tyranny thing instead. It’s possible that it is the same game I tried at one point and rejected because it was far too bleak and amoral.

Then again, I am pretty sure that was Age of Decadence.

So we’ll see.

Right now I am going to lay down in the dark and quietly suffer for a while.

I will talk to you nice people tomorrow.

Just had the idea of a cop show where they follow every single rule to the letter. Even the maverick rogue cop.

Lieutenant : Now I’m going to introduce you to your new partner. But I have to warn you…. he’s gone through three partners in the last six months because he’s a bit of a tight cannon. He plays by ALL the rules.

New Guy : Well, I’ve worked with some pretty..,. wait, what?

Maverick Rogue Cop (MRC) : All right, tough guy, let me get one thing straight. Around here, we follow every rule and regulation in excruciating detail. You got a problem with that, tough guy?

New guy : I guess not, but….

Lieutenant : Oh, you GUESS NOT? You GUESS… NOT? Well that’s just not going to cut it around here. Around here, guessing is for birthday gifts and carnival games!

MRC : Around here, if you have something you say, you say it clearly and precisely, with proper diction, grammar, and usage as defined in the Chicago Style Guide! Then document it in triplicate, making sure to CC all the relevant departments as well as a BCC to Records for archival purposes and for back up. DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?

New Guy : I think….

New Guy gets hard glares from both the Lieutenant and MRC.

New Guy : I mean…. YES SIR!

Fade to black, beat, fade back in to denote the passage of time.

Lieutenant and MRC are circling New Guy, who is sitting on a folding chair in the middle of a bare-bulb interrogation room.

MRC : OK, hot shot… seeing as you seem to think you know it all…. answer me this… it’s 3 am…. a junkie just stabbed his girlfriend with a putty knife…. the ambulance is on its way and you have the junkie in cuffs spread-eagle on the floor…. and you just opened a fresh Word document on your laptop because it’s time to fill out the paperwork…

New Guy : OK, right….

MRC : Well then I have just one question for you, hot shot….

MRC is suddenly all up in New Guy’s face, screaming.

MRC : What font do you use, hotshot? Answer me. WHAT FUCKING FONT DO YOU USE, MOTHERFUCKER? ANSWER ME!

New Guy : (whatever Felicity tells me it should be)

MRC stays close and angry for a second, then relaxes.

MRC : That’s right. That is exactly right.

Then back and angry again.

MRC : AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT!

When I first had this idea, I didn’t know where to go from there. And I still don’t have an ending, but I know that the next bit will show that New Guy has now become the actual rogue cop of this precinct….. but only relative to the total tightasses around him.

So the idea would be to do the whole “you’re a loose cannon!” scene from vigilante cop movies but the things New Guy went maverick on are tiny procedural details.

I am too tired to actually write that right now.

Guess I would end it with the scene where the Lieutenant begrudgingly concedes that New Guy’s maverick ways turned out for the best…. THIS TIME.

And then MRC is like, “You know what? I had my doubts about you at first, but now… you’re all right with me. GET IT? ‘All right’?

Laughter, freeze frame, credits.

God damn I am funny.

Lazy, but funny.

More after the break.

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The War On Climate Change

Yeah, you read that right. War.

I call it a war because that is the only word we silly shaved chimps have for the kind of massive, coordinated, focused effort it is going to take to save our collective asses from decades of not being able or willing to stand up to the rich.

It’s a war because that’s something we humans intuitively understand. Talk science to people and their eyes glaze over.

But tell them we are going to war and that, they recognize.

It’s a war because that’s the only word that can summon up the kind of will and focus it will take to overcome the entrenched interests that would rather see the whole world burn than lose a single penny of profits…. even though they will lose far more profit from climate change than they would have to spend to stop it.

It’s a war because people inherently understand that with war comes sacrifice. Right now. even with the alarming events in Australia, people are unwilling to make much of a personal sacrifice in order to stop the world from burning. They keep thinking that they can put it off for now, or that somehow we can change the world’s entire climate without it costing us so much as an afternoon nap.

That is going to have to change.

It’s a war because wars unite people. The word war automatically activates our collectivist instincts to stop fucking around and start working together because the collective is threatened and we need to defend it.

We can go right back to being assholes to each other once the threat has past.

It’s a war because part of that collectivist urge is the implicit understanding that to get in the way of the war effort is basically treason and that it’s in the best interests of even the most craven and sociopathic of cowards to pitch in and quit bitching, if for no other reason than to avoid the harsh judgment of their peers.

And finally, it’s a war because it’s not impossible that a very literal war will be what it takes to get some parties to meet the necessary emissions goals. I fervently hope it never comes to this, but we have to contemplate the scenario where a major nation flat out refuses to reduce emissions and the only thing that will stop them is if we actually use air strikes to blow up their coal fired power plants and oil refineries.

It’s going to take a war of one sort or another to save modern civilization.

And the sooner we accept that, the sooner we can change.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I ran out of sleeping pills.

Which means I have not slept.

That’s the main symptom of running out of one’s sleep meds these days. There aren’t any psychosis level hallucinations or other crazy ass withdrawal symptoms like there was in the bad old days of Valium and other barbiturates.

Ya just don’t sleep. At all. You can’t.

And at first that is no big deal. After all. I don’t feel tired. If anything, I feel pretty good. Almost chipper, really.

But I have been through periods of low sleep and/or low quality sleep and I know that this is merely the honeymoon period and if this goes on for more than a day I will start getting that feeling of shiny, shiny blankness in my mind that will grow over time and which scares the hell out of me for reasons I do not fully comprehend.

It’s like the bigger it gets, the more of me it displaces in my mind. And if it gets big enough, I start feeling like I don’t know I really am any more.

Am I the person who normally lives in this outsized skin of mine?

Or am I the shiny, shiny, shiny nothingness in my mind?

That’s some spooky shit. I should use that in something.

Anyhow, I am hoping I will last through FRED and hanging out with my friends afterwards before my brain gets too wonky and it gets hard to concentrate on what is in front of me and my mind wanders off somewhere without leaving a forwarding address.

Hey, maybe this would be a good time for me to write some weird poetry!

I’ll give it a shot :

shapes slide over each other
like a kaleidoscopic whirlwind
trying to teach you the alphabet
Of a language you do not speak

On the hilltop shines a beacon
Its light is so very bright, but oh so cold
It is abstraction in its purest form
Without reference or content

Its light exerts a certain pressure on the mind
Like a high pressure hose blasting barnacles off the hull
Of that messy stack of lies and excuses
You call your mind

And as the cleaning continues
The reason for it disappears
And now it’s just a sensation
That pleases as it kills

Hmmm. Not bad, I guess, but it feels messy and ungainly. Like I was was fumbling toward something – some figment in my mind – but got lost.

I suppose if I kept writing that crap long enough, I might figure it out.

But the mood has passed. I am no longer interested in freeform poeticism. It seemed like a fun thing to try but now I am bored of it.

I guess I don’t have what it takes for abstract experimentation. I am too much of an impatient pragmatist for that. I want to be getting something done, not just masturbating with my muse.

If and when I try something like that again, I will go in with at least some sort of notion of a destination or a subject or at least some really arresting starting image.

Otherwise. I just get bored and sick of myself.

More after the break.

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Finally finished a tough fight in Divinity : Original Sin 2 (aka DOS2).

It’s pretty much all tough fights now that I have finally arrived at the city of Arx. The game no longer seems interested in giving me mid-level encounters that are not too difficult so I can build up my characters.

Or maybe the problem is that I am just not that good at the game and it’s finally caught up with me. The game has been getting steadily more difficult and I didn’t make it all the way up the escalator.

But I swear there was a period in between the game seeming way too hard when I started playing it and the game seeming too hard when I play it now where I was in my Goldilocks zone and doing quite well in the game.

How I miss those halcyon days of about a week ago.

Got FRED tonight, in a bit less than an hour. That leaves me with a bit less than 45 minutes to finish the day’s blogging.

No problem. I work fast and I do good work. My rough drafts are better than most people’s finished work and for the most part, I do it by instinct.

Which is pretty amazing, if you think about it. I have a lot of objectively impressive abilities that somehow never add up to a better life for me.

And I find myself looking back to that day when I decided, quite firmly, that intellectual elitism was not for me and that I was an egalitarian at heart.

And I wonder if I made the right choice.

I mean sure, the intellectual elitism might have turned me into a smug prick who loved always being the smartest guy in the room and liked to rub people’s face in it as he effortlessly dominated lesser beings and sold his talents to the highest bidder….

…but I might have been happy. Or at least functional.

That nightmare version of myself looks pretty good to me right now. At least I would have money. And self-esteem. At least I would have made something of myself instead of isolating myself from the world for my entire adult life. At least I would have something to show for my 46 years of life on Earth.

Instead, I am the world’s oldest tadpole. My life never got started and still I wait.

Wait for what? Death, I guess. At the very least, that’s all I see in my future.

Just one long slow escalator ride down into the grave. And my tombstone will read “Here lies Michael John Bertrand. He was around for a while, I guess. ”

And I feel so very frustrated by this. Here I am, brain the size of a planet, with powers hitherto unknown by science, and all I can do is play video games all day because no matter how hard I turn the key, the engine just will not start.

It makes me wabnt to scream bloody murder into the night.

And who knows. Maybe I will.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Sounds like a creepy kids’ game,doesn’t it? ^[1]

What it refers to is this feeling I have been suppressing for the last two or three days. It’s a dark, spooky, depressed kind of feeling, like a shadow or a ghost, and it’s always lurking around the periphery of my consciousness, waiting to suddenly flood my mind with negative energy and nastiness.

Obviously, the only way to win this game is to give in and just let whatever is trying to happen, happen. I severely doubt that there is any way to get rid of it otherwise.

But it’s hard to suppress the urge to suppress it.

Besides, dodging it is kind of fun.

I assume that it’s the specter of some emotion that got activated in me recently that I could not handle at the time, and my mind is trying to process it now but that silly conscious mind of mine keeps putting it off.

Maybe this is how it has to be. I certainly don’t feel like “just letting it happen” is actually an option right now. There’s something else I have to do first in order to open myself to the experience, or maybe just tire myself out enough to stop resisting.

I could go either way.

It’s definitely a cold, spooky kind of feeling. Like someone stepped on my grave, which is quite a trick, because I don’t have one yet.

Besides, I’m still alive. Ish. Sorta kinda.

Granted, I don’t feel alive most of the time. The numbness inside prevents that. At best, I occasionally end up feeling fairly okay-ish.

Dunno what makes that happen. If I did, I would be doing it ALL THE TIME. As far as I can tell, it is completely random.

By sheer luck, the chemical maelstrom in my head cancels itself out and I get to spend a short but lovely time feeling like a living human being.

Is that how sane people feel all the time? Because it’s quite lovely. For once, the cold winds of my depression stop blowing and I can feel the sun on my skin and actually manage to warm up a little.

But then it’s back to business as usual : chill fog, cold winds, and frostbite.

Still, at least I can imagine being alive. I can remember feeling wholesome and connected and warm. I believe that it is possible for me. I will be there again some day, maybe even to stay.

I know that I am not entirely dead. I know that under all the scar tissue and freezer burn, there is live healthy tissue and a living beating heart that might not be that strong, but it manages to pump enough blood to keep me nominally alive.

And sometimes, it even lets me heal a little. Not a lot. But enough to make life worth living, knowing that some day, I might truly be free of this plague of evil and be able to walk in the sunlight and feel the wind on my skin and be free.

More after the break.

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Friggin’ Chinese food.

I have bitched about this before, so I will be quick. Here I am, in the middle of Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, which has one of the largest ethnic Chinese populations outside of Beijing, and I can’t get Chinese food.

Or rather, I can…if I want to pay $30 minimum just to get it delivered. Or I can… but the combos start at “Dinner for Two”: and that is…. you guessed it… $30. Or I can… but it’s some regional cuisine like Hong Kong which I do not recognize and is not what I am looking for when I get a craving for some Chinese food.

And it’s so damned frustrating.

Admittedly, needing a combo I can afford is on me. I am just not capable of facing the bewildering number of options on your average Chinese menu.

Option paralysis overload means brain crash. Ctrl-C to continue.

It’s on them too though, because every dish is $15 minimum. Now either that is a fuckton of food, in which case it’s only mildly overpriced, or it’s what I would consider a normal portion, in which case it’s waaaaayyyy overpriced.

Anyhow, the skinny is that I once more gave up on Chinese food and ended up ordering sushi from good ol Ninkazu again.

It’s not the same thing. I was hardcore craving some sweet and sour pork and fried wontons. But it will have to do.

At least soy sauce will be involved.

---

Still feeling pretty haunted. And out of sync. Ever since I woke up from my afternoon nap, I have felt like I am watching a movie where the audio is very slowly drifting out of sync with the video. Not so much that you can say, for sure, they are out of sync. Just enough to fuck with your perception of time.

I hate it when that happens.

And I can’t help but wonder what it is like to be stable. To not wake up in random brain states where reality feels different and alien and faintly hostile. Or one where people and their emotions don’t seem real. Or one where you feel paranoid as fuck because some part of your mind is sure something terrible is going to happen any moment now.

And yeah, you know that isn’t true. But that doesn’t take the feeling away.

For me, that’s just how life is. Unstable. Smaller wonder, then, that I cling to whatever exterior stability I can find.

Something, somewhere, has to stay the same.

And this is just depression/anxiety. Imagine if I was schizophrenic. Then my reality would not just feel unstable, it would BE unstable.

And that would be scary beyond enduring. One of my worst fears is losing connection to reality and being completely at the mercy of the forces of evil inside my head.

I would be completely fucked then.

Guess I better defeat those forces of evil before that happens.

Because ya never know.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Did the bundle of games thing again. This time only three.

Here’s the reviews :

Ziggurat. I’m getting to old for this shit.

Ziggurat is a fast paced FPS. It’s set in a fantasy world where you are a student wizard facing the final test before becoming a full on wizard : the titular Ziggurat, a pyramid type structure pull of traps, monsters, spells, weapons, and big bad bosses.

In other words, all of the usual trappings of a fantasy setting but for an FPS.

A retro FPS, as it turns out, because the graphics are ray-traced oldschool style and the whole thing feels like something from the era between Doom and Quake.

And I like that. Brings back pleasant memories of playing Duke Nukem 3D until the wee hours of the morning.

This is a good game. Fun, fast, challenging, with tons of variety in everything and plenty to keep any hardcore FPS enthusiast busy for a long long time.

It is, however, quite unforgiving. The game has only one difficulty level, no save games, and death is permanent.

In that sense, it is a “roguelike”. The idea is to get as far as you can in each “run”. And that wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t, like I said earlier, too old for this shit.

My poor old brain just can’t keep up with a game this fast and hard. It’s a shame, because if I were at least a decade young, I am sure I would love a game this dynamic, unpredictable, and challenging.

But as it is, I doubt I will end up playing it much. It’s just too much for me.

Out There. This is almost a game.

The premise is pretty straightforward. You have a space ship. In it, you explore the galaxy, trying to make your way to this one planet that sent out a weird alien signal. You fly from star to star and planet to planet, collecting resources to keep your spaceship moving for as long as you can.

Which sounds great and all, but all you really do is drill for minerals (rocky planets) or fuel and oxygen (gaseous planets) and hope to get enough of both to keep going to do more of the same.

And that is terribly boring.

The game tried to zazz things up by having a random encounter type thing every time you enter a new star system, and those are well written and exciting. You also occasionally come across mysterious alien space stations (which don’t do anything except fill one of your resources) and Earth-like “Garden” planets where you get to meet and interact with alien species.

And that helps make the game less of a grind, but it’s still pretty boring, and the very minimal graphics and sound don’t do much to help.

So I can’t recommend this game. It might make for a fun board game, but as a video game, there is just not enough going on to keep my interest.

There’s just not enough there there.

More after the break.

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Masquerada: Songs and Shadows. I am not quite sure what to make of this game.

It seems pretty good on paper, so to speak.

A “realtime with pausing” tactical battle system? Check. I have used and enjoyed those before in games like Knights of the Old Republic and Baldur’s Gate 2. They have the advantage of letting you command your forces without having to tell them to do every little thing. That way you can concentrate on tactics instead.

A complex plot set in a bold, unique dark fantasy world? Check. Love that kind of thing. I don’t mind a fantasy setting if it’s not just yet another cookie cutter Tolkien ripoff. My favorite PC game of all time, Witcher 3, has a fantasy setting.

Beautiful art and animation? Check. Not a huge priority, but always a plus for me.

And yet there seems to be something off about the whole thing. Something wrong with its aesthetic that I can’t quite put my finger on but which made me stop playing fairly early into the game because I was feeling rather ill.

Might have been a coincidence. Might have gotten sick for other reasons and I just happened to be playing the game at the time.

But I suspect it’s something about the visual style of the game. Something in the way it handles its hard drawn art and sleek animations makes my stomach turn and my head hurt, like I had been staring at a complex optical illusion for too long.

It’s the same sort of feeling I have gotten from exposure to certain repeating geometric patterns in art or on carpeting or clothing.

All it takes is the wrong combination of shapes and colors and I have to leave the room before I pass out and/or vomit.

No doubt, I will give the game another try. It is the most promising of the bunch and I am still pretty interesting in playing it and exploring its world.

But it may be that it and I are simply not compatible. That just happens to me sometimes. Something that is perfectly ordinary to everyone else is somehow deeply disturbing and wrong to me.

Its the same sort of thing that people with Asperger’s Syndrome sometimes complain about, and therefore evidence towards my theory that I might be slightly “on the spectrum” as they say.

Given my airtight and isolated childhood, one would almost expect me to turn out to be somewhat autistic. By anyone’s standards, no kid should grow up without friends, guidance, or reliable authority figures like I did.

There was just plain nobody in my life for my first four years of elementary school. I had no friends, my teachers didn’t like me, nobody paid me any attention at home, and that went double for my harried, tired parents who never wanted me in the first place.

Oh, and no kindergarten.

I often wonder how the hell I made it through all that with any sanity or connection to humanity left at all.

Just lucky, I guess.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

If I was alive, I’d have a job.

Maybe not a great job. Probably not my dream job of being a writer of television shows.

I have the skills but I don’t have the ability to go hustle for jobs and really sell myself. Not yet, anyway. My UpWork experience showed me that I could sell myself in the right conditions and do it remarkably well.

But for now, I have to imagine myself in a regular low-end type job. The kind where you show up, do you work, go home tired, and spend all the hours between getting home and going back to work recovering from the mental, spiritual, and physical strain that working that kind of job imposes upon people. \

Then again, I might get away with paying a lesser price because I am the sort of odd bird that actually likes doing customer service.

So if I had that sort of job, I might actually find it fun.

I’m so weird.

Regardless, if I was a real live human walking amongst you, I would no doubt have employment of some sort.

And honestly, that sounds wonderful to me. To have a place where I can go and have tasks that I can do given to me and to get paid to do those tasks sounds amazing.

Honestly, what I would want most was the validation. I want there to be a place where I am competent enough to do the job without fucking things up and where I feel like the people in charge believe me to be capable of the job, even if they only show it by not firing me yet.

It would also do me good to have co-workers, I think. Especially if I feel like I am perfectly capable of doing the job at least as well as the next employee, and therefore feel like I am their equal as opposed to my more usual attitude of feeling like I am always apologizing for myself.

And I could definitely benefit from being around sane, normal, healthy, sane people with normal lives and kids and cars and houses at least some of the time.

Hopefully, I would be able to learn a lot from such people about how to be alive on planet Earth and not lose your freaking mind.

Normal people know a lot of things I don’t know, which is why they are sane and I am not. I am not talking about book-learnin’, obviously, but something much deeper and vastly more important than it.

Things they don’t even know they know, but that I could learn from them by talking to them, observing them, and trying to incorporate their emotional patterns into my own psyche if I can.

I know that makes me sound like an alien trying to learn to be human and that’s not wrong. In many ways, that’s my exact situation. I’ve never had much proper human socialization and that means that despite all my mental wizardry, I am barely more than a toddler in terms of social adaptation.

And that really hurts.

But I don’t know how to fix that on my own.

And I don’t know how to get the sort of help I need either.

And that, in a nutshell, is my problem.

More after the break.

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If I were alive, I would probably have a man.

Probably a boyfriend, maybe even a husband. Someone to share my life with. Someone who cares about me.

Knowing me, it would be someone who cares FOR me as well.

Some of us are not meant to make it on our own.

Someone who “gets” me. Someone who understands what I am trying so hard to convey. That’s noit always an easy task but it’s still very, very important to me.

Someone who is patient and kind and who can live with how much physical affection I am going to need, at least at first.

I need cuddles. That’s non-negotiable.

Someone I can dote on, too. I am lavishly affectionate and have a strong need to express my love in gestures and words and anything else I can think of.

So any man of mine would have to be prepared to be gushed over. Maybe not in public. I can control myself that much, though I wouldn’t enjoy it.

But in private, watch the fuck out.

And he would have to appreciate me. He would have to know and love that he has someone who is unique and wonderful.

And brilliant. He would have to think I am amazingly intelligent and gifted. I am not sure why that is so important to me, but it is.

Any man of mine has to think I am a super talented and gifted genius.

That’s not negotiable either.

This isn’t a one way street, by the way. I would be a lot of good things for me too. It would not just be about meeting my own needs.

For example, I would be a very kind, considerate, and supportive lover. I have no problem being the supporting partner rather than the leading partner.

I could play June Cleaver to his Ward quite happily. Keep house for him, be there for him when he gets home from work, have a lot meal or a cocktail waiting for him when he gets there, rub the stress out of his poor tired muscles, listen to his day.

That all sounds quite wonderful to me.

And I would still have plenty of time for blogging and video games while he was at work. Cleaning up honestly doesn’t take that much time, especially if you are doing it daily,.

And I would have something to focus on : Keeping my man happy. Keeping myself happy just doesn’t seem to motivate me much, I dunno,maybe if I got better at it, it would, but then again, anhedonia’s a bitch.

Anyhow, in short, if I was a real person who was truly alive and living life, I would be a very different kind of person.

But at least I would be happy.

I will talk to you nice people tomorrow.

I really don’t feel like doing comedy tonight.

I’ve already talked about why. No new material. Don’t feel like doing the old stuff, assuming I could find my little joke list. Panicking about it like a mofo.

And there’s that evil little voice in my head saying “Skipping one week is no big deal. You’ll just commit to next week twice as hard. And that will give you plenty of time to work on new material. You will actually come out ahead!”.

Then again, I had plenty of time to work on new material before today and all I did was play video games all day like normal.

I even have an excuse not to go : I’m broke, so I won’t be able to get a meal like I normally do, and that will make me feel guilty and/or weird.

It’s not a very good excuse. After all, I could probably borrow the money from Joe or Felicity, and thus solve the problem.

I don’t like borrowing money – I hate having some of my check disappear the minute I cash it – but it could be done.

Or I could just eat before I go. That would also solve the problem, kind of.

So right now, I am conflicted about the whole thing. I know I don’t want to go. And I know I could “get away” with not going. I even have a plausible bullshit excuse.

And I also know that skipping tonight would be a bad idea. Giving in to the fear only makes it stronger. And I know that if I skip it, I will feel bad about it, both from feeling like I have failed big time and from knowing Felicity and the gang are off there doing that and having fun while I am home alone wasting my life like usual.

So all I can do is steer into the skid by blogging about it and confronting this issue head on instead of just burying myself in video games et al like usual.

I could probably work up some new material before tonight. I even have a plan of sorts : get out the pen and paper and go on Facebook looking for news items and whatnot to riff on, and work from there.

Kind of like doing desk jokes for a talk show.

That even sounds kind of fun. Scary too, but what isn’t?

So the only thing between me and actually doing the thing tonight is all this anxiety. And I think I can get over it. It’s really just a matter of pushing forward instead of withdrawing and letting the whole thing fall apart.

I can do this. I’m a super funny and talented dude. I have a ton of jokes floating around in my head that only need a little random input to liberate.

So here’s the deal : before I can play my game (Divinity : Original Sin 2), I need to come up with ten solid desk jokes that I can take into comedy tonight.

Maybe I will borrow money, maybe I will eat at home.

But I am writing those jokes. And I am doing them tonight.

Yeah. I can make this work.

More after the break.

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Yeah, so, I did the thing.

The comedy thing, I mean. I got up and did the jokes I had based on funny or interesting stuff I saw on Facebook today.

And it went okay. Not a lot of laughs, not a lot of people.

I might try to just keep a pen and paper handy when I am book face on Facebook so that I can write down desk joke type jokes when they occur to me.

Then again, by basing everything on stuff I got off Facebook today, I at least could be assured that my material was fresh and topical.

So… there’s that.

I will also try to keep comedy in my mind all week instead of blissfully ignoring it until the last minute like I have been doing.

I guess it all boils down to how seriously I want to take this standup comedy thing. Seriously enough to work on it every day? Seriously enough to work really hard at it? Seriously enough to make it a big part of my life?

Because the thing is, for me, standup comedy is not exactly a calling. True, there was a time in my life when I dreamed of being a standup comic, but that time was “the 80s” and I have dreamed a lot of other dreams since then.

Soi I have to ask myself : do I want it bad enough to go through what I will have to go through in order to get good at it?

And the answer is, I don’t know. Possibly not. I admit that I have all the requisite skills in order to be good at it. But I don’t know if I have the passion for it.

I don’t know that I have the passion to succeed at anything, to be honest. I thought I had the passion to be a TV writer but that fell through due to my mental illness. At one time, I thought I had the passion to get a psych degree. That never happened.

I honestly can’t imagine anything that would motivate me enough to keep me trying over and over, even when things get scary and hard and requiring a lot of sustained effort.

I am not good at sustained effort. Especially when I don’t know how long I will have to sustain it or whether it is going to get worse.

And I hate that. I hate that I am so weak and flabby and flaccid. I know that somewhere inside me is a might engine capable of astounding amounts of work, but I just don’t have to ability to harness that energy and make it work for me.

I need someone else to provide the substance, structure, and stability.

All I can provide is the genius.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Been sleeping well today. Which is nice.

By sleeping well, I mean sleeping for a long time without it being that sick kind of sleep where I wake up feeling all groggy and confused and ill.

No, this time, for whatever reason, I slept for around six hours more or less uninterrupted. I say “more or less” because I am pretty sure I did wake up a few times but then went right back to sleep.

Close enough. When you have the kind of sleep issues I have, you take what you can get. A lot of the time, sleeping for three hours in a row is a triumph.

So, so far so good. I will probably get some more sleep after I finish Part 1 of the day’s bloggination. And that’s fine.

After all, all I was going to do with my time was play video games, and the games can wait. They will be there when I wake.

Doing what I need to do to take care of myself is far more important.

---

Safe At Home

I hereby declare myself to be safe.

There are no bullies lurking to hurt me in my life. I have no serious threats to my safety waiting to trip me up, and above all no reason to feel unsafe.

Which means I can relax. I don’t have to maintain a state of constant vigilance. There is no force or entity that is just waiting for me to drop my guard so it can “get” me.

And I don’t need to hide any more. Hide from what? Hide from who?

Whatever threatening forces there have been in my life are long gone. I don’t have to be scared of dealing with things any more. I can ignore the oversensitive alarm system in my head and do the things I want to do but have been too scared to do.

Above all, I give myself full and unlimited permission to leave my comfort zone and go out into the world to find neat stuff to do.

I have nothing to be ashamed of.

I have nothing to be afraid of.

And there’s a big ol’ world out there waiting to give me what I want.

I just have to go out there and take it.

And I can do that.

---

Speaking of leaving my comfort zone, tomorrow night is comedy night and I am beginning to panic.

Which is fine. It’s just something I have to go through. Might as well get it over with so I can move beyond this panic and get to work.

So here goes : I don’t have any new jokes, I haven’t even bene thinking about jokes this week, it feels like the gig (such as it is) is coming up way too fast, I’m not ready, I don’t know what I am going to do, I’m going to end up bombing hard and feeling humiliated, and I want to just stay home and hide till it’s all over.

I think that about covers it.

This is roughly how I felt last week when I got a last minute reprieve via comedy night being canceled due to the snowstorm.

Only this time, I am panicking a day early so I can get it over with.

We will see how that goes.

More after the break.

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Where was I? Oh right, panicking!

Aaaaah! Oh god, no! EVERYTHING is GOING to HELL and we’re ALL going to DIE! We’re all DOOMED! This is the END! Aaaaaaaagh! AAaaaaagh! AAAAAAAAh!

Etc., etc, and so on, ad infinitum ad nauseum^[1]. You get the general idea.

Have to do a fight over again in Divinity : Original Sin 2. Which is annoying. Thought I had saved the game when it was over but apparently not.

It wasn’t a particularly tricky fight or anything, I just hate having to repeat things.

I am pretty sure I am inches from the end of the main plot of the game. I finally got to the place where I would ascend to the titular Divinity, only to have the biggest villain of the game blow it up, and move me straight into the whole “we have to get out of here, this whole place is about to explode!” part of the story.

I am disappointed to have divinity snatched away so cheesily, but I am not surprised. I knew they would pull some kind of chickenshit maneuver like this. I knew they would shy away from actually making you the new Divine.

Apotheosis might sound like fun but it would be damned tricky to write, let alone translate into a game mechanic.

I mean, I could do it. Just level the character up to max, give them some amazing abilities, and let them wander the open world until they get bored with nigh-omnipotence and stop playing on their own.

Better yet, level them up a bunch then let them start the game over with their neato keen new abilities.

Or you can do like Elder Scrolls Online did, and have the last act of the plot involve you getting your godlike powers and using them to get to the last boss before the final fight.

That was hella fun. Blasting hordes of tough enemies with one shot, bashing down walls with your giant fists, screaming with a voice like thunder about how badly you are going to fuck up the big baddie when you get to him.

Good times. Very good.

I would even (begrudgingly) accept an “ascend unto glory” ending where the music swells and the graphics show you riding into the heavens on a golden chariot and disappearing into an unimaginably glorious new life…. then the credits roll.

Even that would make for a better copout than just snatching the thing you have been moving towards for the whole game away at the last second.

Oh well. Guess I will go do that fight again and see how things actually end.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.