Today’s been fucked up so far.

Because I had one of my rare but fun attacks of insomnia this morning. Patient readers know the drill : I go to bed and am drifting off like usual then something suddenly winds me up and I am instantly and painfully awake.

Then I lounge about futilely trying to complete my journey to Sleep Country Canada{{1]] for a while before reluctantly concluding that I have no choice but to get up and do stuff.

So I did. Got up at around 10:45 am. Played video games for a while. Figured on eating lunch at 2 pm like usual then trying sleep again.

But then my energy burst suddenly and spectacularly imploded at around 1:30 pm and even though I knew it was a bad idea, I really had no choice but to lay down for a nap.

And that’s why I am only getting around to eating lunch now, just before 4 pm.

And that’s going to throw me off. My body does not like surprises like this. Having my meals at roughly the same times every day provides my fucked up diabetic system some hard earned predictability and this is going to mess with that.

But whatever. Nothing I can do about that now, except cope. I will be able to re establish the routine soon and things will go back to normal.

Hate that fucking insomnia though. It’s so jarring. One moment I am drifting off and the next it’s like I just drank a triple espresso laced with crack.

That’s actually a secret menu item at Starbucks. Go ahead and ask for it next time you are there. They will be very impressed and give you a knowing wink that acknowledges your superior status as a way cool insider.

Other than that, I guess I have been doing okay lately. Depression has been slackening. I feel sort of good sometimes.

I have a happy problem : between my sisters Anne and Catherine’s Xmas gifts, I now have $175 in Amazon Canada credit to spend on gifts for myself.

Which means I have to figure out what I want. Never an easy task for me. Patient readers know I have a lot of trouble making decisions sometimes.

Especially in situations where there as many options as this one.

I might get a new monitor to try to solve my Facebook issues. And to make my games all pretty and nice.

They have monitors that have innovations to minimize eye strain now. Sounds good.

I could get myself a super fancy ultra deluxe swanky vibrator. Something to really scratch my deep bitch itch.

For a fag like me, feeding my hungry butthole is very important. Still haven’t found the “right” sex toy for me. The one that fits me right and feels great and that I can pleasure myself with while also being able to jack off at the same time.

If only I could order a big dicked male prostitute on Amazon. Could do a lot to improve my mood by relieving my t-t-t-tension.

What else… new computer chair, of course. Or maybe just some really tough bungie cords so I can tie myself to my current one to keep myself from leaning forward and putting stress on my lower back all the time.

Or here’s a crazy idea : books. I haven’t added a new book to my collection in ages. Plenty of Discworld books I haven’t read, to name just one.

Hmmm. I need time to think about this.

More on this later.

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But then again, this

Current status : annoyed that my local KFC closes at 7:30 pm.

I mean, waddy fug? I can’t be the only night owl in town. And there has to be enough business in late-night cravings and such to justify staying open later.

I had my order all worked out. I was going to get some chicken tenders, 4 biscuits, and coleslaw (gotta have my slaw), and I was really jonesing for those biscuits.

Damn do I love me a good biscuit.

But noooo. They close at 7:30 pm. So I ordered from 7-11 instead.

And they have chicken tenders. But no biscuits.

It was a furry I know named Ish that started it all. He is from the Deep South and he got to talking about having biscuits and gravy for breakfast and that kicked off my biscuit cravings and here we are.

So now I am munching my three chicken strips/three potato wedges combo, which costs $6. If I had gotten the strips by themselves, it would have cost me… $6.50.

I shitteth thou not. It cost less for more. It’s like they are saying, “Listen, we will PAY you 50 cents to take these goddamned potato wedges off our hands!”.

I don’t even want the wedges. They’re okay but not great.

But a bargain’s a bargain.

Today’s been uneventful, apart from the sleep issues detailed above the line in today’s blog entry. And that’s fine by me.

I need to cocoon now and then. These days where nothing is expected of me let me recharge my social batteries.

Like a dying cellphone, they charge slow and don’t hold much of a charge so they tend not to last very long.

If only I could put them in airplane mode!

Tomorrow night is New Year’s Eve. You know, when you think of it, it’s weird that we have a major holiday that we observe that is technically only the night before the real holiday that we don’t observe.

Nobody makes special plans for New Year’s DAY.

My plan is to go out to watch the TV with Joe and Julian at around 11 pm. Pour myself a big glass of my expensive champagne, open my Pot of Gold chocolates, and pretend to be fancy for a while.

Heck, I might even put clothes on for the occasion.

Because it’s pretty hard to be fancy naked. You at least need accessories. Top hat, or pearls, maybe a jaunty plume array.

Some day, I hope to be healthy enough in both body and spirit to go to actual parties on special occasions like this.

For now, I’ll just keep kickin it homestyle.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

[[1]] Sing it with me : Why buy your mattress anywhere else? [[1]]

This is going to be a good one. I can already feel the ice on my heart.

I’ve been feeling proud lately. Not a lot and not often, but some. I type a funny comment on something I am viewing online, and I congratulate myself on being such a hilarious motherfucker. I do something super cute and sweet as Fruvous, and for a moment or two I marvel at what a magical person I am.

My usual mental processing produces a particularly revelatory insight and I feel lucky to be so gosh darned smart.

This is good. This is progress. For far too long. the Great Schism inside me has kept me from deriving nearly any ego benefits from my extraordinary abilities. I have gifts most people would envy and yet they have brought me precious little joy.

I’m not saying they make me better than everyone else. Ick. Perish the thought.

But I should at least get a healthy self-worth out of it. Some degree of pride, of positive self-regard. Some solid basis for building a healthy sense of self.

One with solid boundaries so that I don’t feel so naked and vulnerable all the time.

My soul needs warm clothing, god damn it. Fuck this midnight tundra bullshit. I want warm clothes, a nice home, and a decent array of healthy snacks.

And soup. There must be soup.

So I keep circulating back to remembering my blessings. My gifts. The things that have always been there, but my depression kept me from appreciating them,

Patient readers know the list. Never had to study in school ’cause I am super smart. Very funny, according to many people. Brilliant writer, obviously. Enormously creatively talented in general.

All that and a heck of a nice fella, too. And cute. Charming. Charismatic. Etc.

And yet, just from typing all that, I can feel my relentless inner prosecutor firing up the engine of self-destruction to destroy any chance of self-esteem.

“Yeah, but what do you DO with it all? ” it sneers. “Nothing! All that power and potential at your fingertips and all you do is rot away in a filthy bedroom playing video games and waiting to die! Why? Because you’re pathetic and weak!”.

Yeah, because of you, asshole. I mean, what’s your end game here? What can your prosecution possibly accomplish? Because if you can’t answer that question – and you can’t – then you have to admit it’s just mindless sadism. Rage directed inward.

Would it be so wrong if I just loved and accepted myself unconditionally? Maybe that will lead me out of this maze of madness and out into the warmth of the sun. Maybe it won’t. Maybe that’s not the point at all.

It’s not like all this harsh self-judgment will lead me to great performance. That’s a toxic lie and always has been. It leads to the exact opposite, an inability to act at all.

So why not try the opposite approach? Love myself no matter what, without any need for justification. Be happy for no reason. Shine alone in the dark, just for myself.

What the hell, let’s try a different brand of crazy.

More after the break.

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The silent approach of a shadow

Oooh, spooky and mysterious.

I really should give poetry a try.

Back from doing McD’s with Le Gang. The weather was inclement, so we implemented Felicity’s brilliant plan to go park in a nearby covered parking structure attached to a Sobey’s that didn’t quite make it.

That still sort of blows my mind. Sobey’s is huge back home. Monolithic, even. So a failed Sobey’s to me is like a failed Starbucks.

Logically, they must exist, but emotionally, wow.

Conditions were far comfier in the parking structure, and we were able to have our usual fascinating intellectual conversation in peace and comfort.

Well, except that an older couple with a yappy little dog came through. The dog was cute enough – some fluffy little white thing – but the barking was quite annoying.

And we had to put up with it twice – once when they went out and once when they came back. So, yay that.

We got to talking about why nerds (in general) don’t like sports.

My theory is that there is a vital social component to sports that we nerds, being poorly endowed in the social antenna department, just don’t get.

The whole idea of rooting for a team along with all the other fans experiencing the same thing doesn’t make sense without the vital ingredient of collective socialization.

It’s a sheep thing. Not that I am dissing sheep just because I am not one.

Often, I envy their sense of normalcy and predictability. It might be crowded in that there sheep pen but it’s also a lot warmer and more secure than freezing my ass off out here on the oh so edgy fringes of society.

But I know that peace can never be mine. Conformity is simply not an option. As far as I can tell, I was born stubborn and independent, and that’s not going to change no matter how long I stare into the window at all those happy, strong people in their warm, loving homes where everyone is pretty much okay most of the time.

I can look, and long for what they have, but that world is not open to me. If I want to have what they have, I will have to find (or build) it myself, according to my own needs and my own nature, not theirs.

Wolves can’t live in the sheep enclosure, no matter how hard they try.

That goes double for us foxes. Wolves at least have packs.

Us foxes are loners by default. Maybe we den up and raise a family eventually, but that’s it. We don’t have a social unit larger than “family”.

And me, I know I can’t “belong”. Because I cannot and/or will not change in order to fit in. I am me, period, no negotiation, no compromise.

And right or wrong, that’s just who I am. The only person I can be.

So I might as well be who I am as hard as I can.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Feeling weary and apathetic at the moment, not that I care.

I mean, technically, it’s the usual angry apathy that comes from getting sick and tired of the shrieking cacophony in my head from all the voices and words and thoughts and notions and feelings and ideas and whatnot all trying to get out at the same time.

And it makes me want to scream, “Shut up! Shut UP! SHUT UUUUUUUUUP!”

And then, when I finally get silence, say “Please form an orderly line and your concerns will be addressed shortly. ”

Oh, if only it were that easy.

Speaking of which, I realized recently that one of the things that makes someone a writer is a tendency to retain words.

For most people (I assume) words are transient things that pass through their minds unmolested. They don’t retain them, think about them, analyze them, or file them away.

But to a writer, words are powerful and precious things, and we want to share them with others. In fact, I think the whole thing operates based on the basic human instinct to communicate information to one another.

Problem is, all those words build up in our minds. Input vastly outpaces output. This creates a pressure inside our minds that can be unbearable.

It can even make us crazy. Legit.

Writing is the only way out. Learned that the hard way. Only via writing can we get some of those goddamned words out and clear a little breathing space for ourselves.

One seemingly sane notion as to how to solve the problem would be to learn to just plain erase those words. Fuck them if they are such a hassle. Clear everything out and start over, and maybe be a bit more selective this time.

But that would feel like murder to me. Genocide. My words are my babies. My children. My darlings. And my treasures. If I have anything of worth to give to this world, it’s my gift of words, and I have been carefully hoarding, refining, and perfecting them for as long as I can remember.

And ultimately, all my other major mental processes feed back into the word center of my brain. All my deep ponderings, all my razor sharp analysis, all my comedy and sense of the absurd, all my spiritual longing, and every other blessed things beavering away in the capacious and cacophonous cavern of my cerebrum all feed back into that massive warehouse of words in my mind.

I word, therefore I am.

Everything else about me is extraneous to this purpose. I can see that now. Not to deny my own humanity or discard my individuality, but I can see and feel my purpose so clearly now that it fills me with fear and awe.

But you know what? I think I’m going to let whatever this is happen anyhow. I feel like complex structures are compressing and collapsing leaving only clarity behind.

And it feels pretty good. Almost…. cleansing.

More after the break.

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Follow your heart

One of those lessons droned into me by all the pro-social messages in 80’s cartoons was that I should “follow my heart”.

And I never disagreed, exactly. But I never understood it either. As far as I could tell my “heart”^[1] contained a lot of emotions but no directions. It never told me to do stuff. It was just a place where I felt my feelings.

So what is there to follow?

These days I can see what a narrow and ignorant view that was. The idea I was too blind to see is that you follow the positive feelings in your heart in search of more.

That still sounds sort of…. wrong to me. My legacy rationalist software insists that such an approach is madness because the heart doesn’t know anything and understands even less, so how good can its guidance be? Might as well follow the wind.

But I am learning. I am spiritually upgrading myself. The truth is that the heart knows a lot of things, especially about how to find happiness.

In fact, looked at properly, it seems insane to try to deduce what might make me happy via logic and analysis when I can just ask my heart directly.

Plus, my heart is where all the love and acceptance and warmth that my depression has denied me is stored up and waiting for someone or something to release it.

Another frequent pro-social message of my childhood was to be “true to yourself”^[2] and again, I never disagreed but I didn’t understand it either.

How could you be anything but yourself? No matter what you did, you were doing it as yourself by definition. Right?

I get it now, of course, and it’s intimately connected to following your heart. Being true to yourself means being the person you are inside, straight from the heart, without trying to force yourself to be some pre-conceived idea of yourself.

That never works anyhow. The real you is always squirming around and trying to get free of whatever mold you’ve trapped it in.

The iron suit never REALLY fits.

But like with following my heart, I am in transition. Learning. Growing.

It strikes me as darkly hilarious that here I am, brain the size of a planet, and yet I am just now learning things that healthy people learned at such an early age that they don’t remember ever not knowing it.

Being raped smashed my little mind and sealed me away in this cage. A cage that was supposed to protect me, not imprison me.

But what truly traps me is not the cage. The cage is nothing but icicles and frost. It can’t hold me. Might as well be cobwebs on a giant.

What keeps me trapped is fear. Fear of what life outside the cage would be like, all exposed like that.

That cage has been far, far too small for me for a very long time^[3]. I’ve had to live all cramped up and paralyzed just to stay inside it.

Time to stand up and face the world, I guess.

Or at least build myself a bigger fucking cage.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I’m positive I took my “24 hour” Reactine this morning and yet here I am in the grips of a moderate allergy attack around six hours later.

I am actually pondering hunting up that nasal spray I got when I had that pain over my right eye and seeing if it contains an antihistamine or is just a decongestant.

Decongesting is fine – I could use some right now. But what I really want is to stop my nose from becoming a snot faucet in the first place.

Sorry. That was gross. But it’s how I feel.

My feelings of “Is this it?” about my life continue to grow. And that’s a good thing. Hopefully it will build to the point of a useful crisis that finally smashes the walls of this cage of mine and lets me do the things that could advance my life.

It takes a crisis because I am incapable of willingly moving from a state of (fatuous) comfort to a state of exposure and discomfort, ergo the only way progress is possible is if I become uncomfortable where I am and need to move to regain comfort.

So letting things like restlessness, boredom, and ambition build within me until I just can’t take it any more is actually a great plan for me.

Sad. But effective.

Gave lorazepam another shot this morning. This time I made sure it dissolved completely under my tongue.

The bubbles tickle.

But the strength of the effect was about the same. Noticeable, but not dramatic. Didn’t seem to have much of an effect on my anxiety, but then again, I was alone.

So I may try it “under load” when we go out to do the usual Sunday shopping and McD’s with Miss Felicity this evening.

It does seem to help me get to sleep and stay asleep. Hopefully I don’t end up asleep in the back of the car tonight, but if so, lesson learned.

Just in case, though, I won’t take the pill until I have completed my shopping and have eaten my McD’s meal.

I mean, the stuff is supposed to be super fast acting, hence the whole tongue thing, so it should be a sufficient test to use it while we’re chatting after our meals.

Can’t find the other one, whose name I have forgotten, at the moment. It is not sublingual. Taken the usual way.

I suppose I feel/felt something from Lora Ze Pam. A sort of warm, solid calm. But not a wholesome one, I am afraid. Feels more like it’s made part of my mind fall asleep, which is the point I suppose.

But I don’t care for it. It feels…. wrong.

Might just be the sleepiness talking though.

One of the conundrums (conundra?) of my life is that both good and bad sleep can leave me feeling terrible when I wake up.

In fact, the worst waking conditions tend to come from these “catching up” periods where my brain is finally getting the deep REM sleep it needs and is burning through the backlog as fast as it can.

Like a home reno, it’s a great thing to have done, but a bitch while it’s happening. I wake up feeling ten dimensions of awful because all that heavy dreaming using up all my brain calories and I end up feeling like a god-ridden Voodoo mystic right after the god leave their body.

What? It’s a perfectly normal image anyone can relate to.

More after the break.

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About hard science fiction

My opinion on hard sci fi can be summed up in two simple, elegant words : fuck it.

Fuck it in the ASS till it DIES.

I may or may not read it, but I am sure as hell never going to write it.

I came to this firm conclusion based on this book I have been reading about how to write science fiction.

I’ve had the book for a while but hadn’t read it because I don’t take writing instruction well. My writing is a deeply personal (and personally deep) process and I do not take kindly to others poking their dirty fingers into my innards by presuming their understand me well enough to tell me what to do.

This is neither healthy nor sane, but it is nevertheless true of yours truly.

But recently I got over myself enough to start reading the thing, and I greatly enjoyed the first bunch of essays. Lots of useful insight by people like Heinlein and Asimov and other sci fi luminaries.

But in the next section, it all turned to hard science fiction bullshit. How to generate a new planet based on scientific principles. How to do the same with the lifeforms on that planet. And the society that arises when said lifeforms become sentient.

And all in dreary and irrelevant mathematical detail.

I mean, the section on society starts off with a spreadsheet, god damn it.

And I truly, deeply, and vehemently do not give a shit. In fact, my apathy is so profound it generates negative shits – antishits, if you will – that collide with other people’s shits and annihilate them in a perfectly efficient shit explosion.

To me, all that rigorous mathematical and scientific calculations is worse than pointless, it gets in the way.

The stories I write come from deep inside my soul, and those are the stories I am going to tell no matter what “research” has to say about it.

I am never going to ask research’s permission to write the story I want to write.

What I write will be consistent with what I know of science, and I know a fair bit, but I am no expect, just a well informer bystander.

But for me, it is always all about the narrative. The story. All else is subsidiary to the needs of the story and must be aligned with the story and its purpose.

Hard science fiction, at least as represented in the book, has, to my mind, its priorities entirely wrong. Who cares if the setting and creatures are perfect in some abstract way.

What matters is whether you have a story worth telling with them!

That’s my curmudgeonly shillelagh shaking for the day.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Otherwise known as Canadian Black Friday.

We even have our own special word for this time : “door crasher” sales.

And I honestly should be more into it as I might just be able to get some really good deals on medium ticket items like a new computer chair or upgrades for the computer or a new monitor for the computer.

I sense a theme developing.

So I will try to stir up some enthusiasm for looking at the sales.

Tried a lorezapam this morning, right before going to bed. Sorta.

It’s a sublingual pill – the kind you put under your tongue and let it dissolve there. And I had never taken a pill like that.

So I stuck it under there and forgot about it – but then absentmindedly fished it back out and swallowed it instead.

Next time, concentrate!

So I am pretty sure I did not get the full effect. Certainly, nothing dramatic happened. I could feel something going on, but it wasn’t very strong.

Pretty sure it helped me sleep, though, which was the whole point of taking it when I did. I noticed that help with sleep was indicated for both of these anti-anxiety meds, and I haven’t seen my sleeping pills (Trazadone) in months, so I figured, what the hell.

And I slept well, at least by my standards. Not so much with the torment. And I think the floodgates may have been opened and I will sleep a bunch more today.

If so, fine. I will stifle the part of me that always whines about how it wants to be awake and having fun when this comes around, and make the deliberate choice to cease all resistance and let my body and brain get as much sleep as they think they need.

That will be made easier by the fact that I have been really feeling the burden of days lately. I look ahead to a day spent playing video games and think, “Is that really it?”.

It’s just not enough any more. I need more. I need to do something productive and meaningful. Something that makes me feel like I have really done something, instead of just watching my days go by in a stunned state of frozen stupor.

So I am going to come up with…. something. Doesn’t matter what, specifically, just as long as it feels right and gets my creative energies out.

I’ve been pondering getting into recording videos whenever the idea strikes me and that means not worrying about production values, at least at first.

Just record it and post it, bam, just like that. Seamless. No post-production, no editing, no polish. Just me and my thoughts and my persona and my charisma and articulacy, raw and uncut, just the way the kids like it these days.

The quality of the product is not the primary concern. What’s most important is to get used to expressing myself like that.

Once I am comfortable doing it, I can then maybe slow down enough to do some editing of the video before posting it.

Or maybe not. This is about self-expression, not any secondary extrinsic goal.

My mission in life is to build up my id and I can do that by expressing it in as raw and pure a form as possible.

More after the break,

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Oh Mister Sandman

…give me a break.

So I was right. The damn has burst and I am very sleepy now. Slept for another four hours after finishing part 1 and even as I woke up from that (which took a while) I knew that I was going to be sleeping a whole lot more.

So after trying to play Gems of War with no success for a while, I decided to just order my food and get my blog on and try get my blogging done so I can just snorfle my food and then go the fuck back to sleep already.

On a whim, I ordered chili cheese fries from New York Fries. I thought about getting a poutine instead but decided I didn’t feel like taking on all that grease.

Poutine is a wonderful food…. if you’re ready for it.

Then again, chili cheese fries are loaded with grease too. Hmmm.

Oh well, it is on with way anyhow. I will nosh with caution.

Seeing as I have been asleep the whole day. I don’t exactly have a lot of biographical reportage to commit to metaphorical paper.

Opened my gift from my mother. It’s a shower radio. Keen gear. I can listen to my fave radio station, Jack FM, in the shower.

I love Jack. It’s so perfectly Gen-X, from its hilariously snarky station IDs to its motto of “we play what we want!” to the fact that they play mostly 80’s music.

It’s our go-to station when we’re in Joe’s car. If we’re not listening to Jack, it’s because Jack is playing ads or because there’s something cool like The Debaters on CBC.

I also got an adorable little notebook (the paper kind) in the shape of a fluffy cartoon fox’s face. And he’s even wearing a lil Santa hat.

I adore it, of course,

Other gifts will trickle in over time, I suppose. Nothing from Catherine yet, and I know she sent stuff to my mother, my brother, and Anne, so I am sure mine will arrive soon.

Unless she’s decided to snub me. Anything’s possible, I suppose,

Well my cholesterol extravaganza of a meal has arrived. Just in time for my body to inform me that I really need to poop.

First I’m hungry, then I need to defecate…. make up your mind, body!

Once that digestive iteration is complete, I will go back to bed for some serious snoozing, and hopefully catch up enough to be reasonably awake for hanging out with Joe and Julian and watching stuff off the PVR at midnight.

Suppose we should start planning for a lackadaisical New Year’s Eve. Like with Xmas, I want to make sure we do something to celebrate it but I am also realistic about exactly how much energy and commitment we can summon up for the task.

So I figure we just get some pleasant snacks and some liquor. Well I’ll get some liquor for myself, anyhow.

This time, if it all possible, I am going to get myself a small bottle of vodka and some of that Canada Dry Diet Cranberry Ginger Ale.

I had my civilized champagne Xmas night.

New Year’s Eve, I’m gonna drink like a drunk.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I wanted to link one of those “men can’t help acting on impulse” ads from the 80’s here but the only one on YouTube isn’t very good.

Oh what the hell.

I’ve always wanted to present that as a legal defense.

“Yes, my client squeezed her ass and went HONK HONK, but your Honor, men just can’t help acting on impulse!”

See how that works out for ya.

I bring up the subject because I just bought a game on impulse. Based on the review in this here video which made it sound like something I would really enjoy, and the fact that when I looked it up on Steam, it was only $5.56.

Sold! Because what the hell. Live a little.

Only after buying it and starting to download it did it occur to me that I already have a Diablo-type game on the go, one called Shadows Awakening.

Alert fans will recognize it as one of the games I got in a bundle about a month ago.

And it’s pretty good. Interesting system, decent world, fun combat. But I am not all that attached to it, really.

So if the New Hotness displaces it, whatever. Fine.

But it does shed light on my difficulties when it comes to acting on impulse.

Traditional Western thinking would say, “Good! People should always think before they act and consider the potential consequences and rewards. The world would be a better place if people did this more!”.

And while that is true enough in principle, there is no principle, no matter how seemingly sound, that cannot turn into toxic madness if taken too far.

Some decisions have to be impulsive. The human mind is not built to make every single decision, no matter how trivial, based on deep consideration of all the options.

Take it from one who knows. It’s exhausting. You can run yourself ragged trying to do that shit all the time.

And I know this. And yet, I am struggling with feelings of self-doubt and regret because of my impulse purchase despite how little it cost.

My legacy rationalist software insists that I should have thought it through more and maybe reconsidered getting it because I already have enough games on the go and one of them is in the exact same subgenre and I am a fool for doing something so recklessly impulsive and I should never, ever do that again.

Again…. we are talking a $5.56 purchase here. But apparently, that doesn’t matter to my overbeating superego. It could have cost a nickel and the consequences would be the same. Acting on impulse is just plain wrong!

Well fuck that shit. Acting on impulse can be perfectly fine. Not only that, on a deeper level, acting on impulses strengths your ability to act in all situations, and suppressing all impulses drains the life out of your will and your soul.

So fuck you, irrational rationalism. You don’t know shit about shit.

No matter how high we build our ivory towers of logic and reason, they are still built on a foundation of id, and the whole damn thing is worse than useless if the id don’t work.

So all of rationalism’s id-suppressing bullshit is violently counterproductive and hence darkly humorous in its futility.

So to hell with that. I am going to do what it takes to make my id base stronger and healthier and more potent so that the rest of me has more to go on.

There comes a time when the most rational and sane option is to let the id club the ego and superego over the head so you can finally have some goddamned fun.

More after the break.

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Xmas and NIMH

So I made the Xmas dinner and it turned out great. Yay me!

Had the usual amount of stress and crisis management that comes with doing anything more complicated than scratching your nuts.

But none of that matters now. It all went fine and that’s all that matters. Whatever worry or stress I have left in my bloodstream can just fuck right off, and howdy.

Watched one of my all time favorite movies, the Secret of NIMH, while we ate our sumptuous Xmas feast.

That movie never fails to fill my heart with joy. Saw it when I was still young enough to have its full impact on me. And it is so full of pure Seventies wholesome love and kindness and compassion (as well as scary danger and a seriously evil rat) that it speaks to something deep inside my heart.

It comes from where I come from. We share the same soil.

Drank some of my expensive champagne with dinner. So I am slightly drunk now.

It was pretty good. Dry, but with a solid fruity layer underneath to keep it from being too pucker face inducing. Right amount of bubbles. Goes down nice and smooth.

And of course, I drank it nice and slow. Never gulp champagne. It will have its revenge almost immediately. Learn that the hard way.

In my defense, it was a champagne cocktail and it was delicious and I was thirsty.

Got somewhat overheated doing the cooking, so I had to sit down in front of this a-here compubox of mine for half an hour so I could cool off before I ate.

Cue 50’s housewife complaining about slaving over a hot stove.

Sucks to be this prone to heat stroke. Wish I could turn that shit off. If it wasn’t for this frailty, I would love the hell out of summer. What’s not to love?

Instead, I spend the summer in a confused state between loving the sunshine and blue skies and all that primary color stuff and hating the heat that is making my head throb and leaving me nauseous and dizzy and hearing a faint sort of sizzling sound.

Got my usual $75 virtual gift certificate from Anne. Thinking of getting this with it.

Its review scores are pretty high, and it has this gem in the product description :

“Imagine a BMW motor knocking the hell out of your stiff knotty muscles.”

Damn, these people are speaking my language. I picture that line being delivered by a big fat salesman type in a cowboy hat smoking a cigar.

Hopefully it can kick the shit out of my back muscles and give a royal reaming to the cramps I get there sometimes.

Take that, you sons of bitches!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

So I wander out to the kitchen at around 7:30 pm to make myself some dinner, and Joe says, “Okay, time to start cooking dinner!”.

I am completely flummoxed, and stand there stunned. He starts going on about how I didn’t read the instructions and we need milk to make the instant mashed potatoes.

Actually, I did read the instructions. What I failed to do was convey to my friends that I knew from experience that the milk was optional and that I did not want to add it because Julian is allergic to dairy.

My bad. Sorry guys!

By this point I have mentally caught up enough to interrupt and say that it is Xmas Eve, not Xmas Day.

Admittedly, I was not totally sure of that. I have been having time problems connected to sleep lately. Namely that when I wake up, I have absolutely no idea when I am. Day, night, time of year, it’s all a grey blur.

That just made this whole thing even more confusing.

But yes, it’s Xmas Eve, and yet somehow Joe thought tonight was the night I was going to cook Xmas dinner for us all.

Problem is, he did not share this notion with me. If he had, I would have been happy to cook our little meal today. No problemo.

But I, quite reasonably, assumed our Xmas dinner would be on Xmas DAY.

Hence the name. It’s not called Xmas Eve Dinner, dang it!

He then tells me he’s going to be at his parents’ place for Xmas dinner.

I said “Um, Covid?”.

He says he’s been self-isolating. Um, no he hasn’t, he was shopping with me at Sav-on Tuesday night. But I didn’t say that.

Then he says he’s going over there tonight.

Then when was this dinner supposed to happen?

Anyhow, it’s sorted now. Apparently we are going to do the dinner tomorrow night, like I thought in the first place.

No real damage done, apart from confusing the heck out of me and leaving rather rattled. And for some reason, sleepy.

I think my circadian rhythms are seasonally confused.

Plus I think I am entering a “catching up on sleep” period. My sleep has been all kinds of terrible until recently. Shallow, restless, broken, and above all brief. Couldn’t stay asleep for more than an hour and a half. Sleeping maybe five hours a day.

But in the last couple days, it has improved. I’ve had multiple four hour naps and as a result I am feeling a lot more human and sane.

Ironically, one of those four hour snoozes almost caused me to miss therapy today. I lay down to sleep at 9 am, and the fact that therapy was at 1 pm never even crossed my mind, let alone prompted me to set an alarm.

What were the odds I would sleep for four hours? IN A ROW?

So when I was woken up by the phone ringing, I ignored it. I reserve the right to be officially asleep when I want to be.

But then it rang again like 15 mins later, and I decided to answer it. And it was while getting to the phone that I realized it was 1:15 pm and that was my freaking therapist.

Therapy happened anyhow. But lesson learned. Next time I will set the alarm if I am even vaguely near the appointed time.

More after the break.

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And so on.

Well, here it is, Xmas Eve. Woop de frigging doo.

Not feeling that festive at the moment, I guess. But don’t judge me. I just woke up from a nap and therefore feeling neither holly nor jolly.

Plus I almost forgot that I was not done blogging yet. On Thursdays, instead of doing half of my blogging with lunch and half with supper, I do half with supper and half at like 10 pm or 11 pm.

I do that because in general, therapy drains my mental resources so much that to blog afterwards is unthinkable.

Which is too bad, because otherwise that would be the perfect time to blog, when all the stuff stirred up by therapy is still floating around in my mind and hasn’t sunk back to the bottom of my mind.

In this metaphor, my mind is apparently a riverbed or the seafloor.

Woops, special bulletin, this just in : I remembered what I was going to blog about!

I have this book called the Self-Confidence Workbook. And I opened it up to a random section and read the following quote :

Fear is familiarity’s impostor. It passes off what you dread for what you know, offers the worst in place of the ambiguous, serves up anxiety in the absence of comfort, substitutes assumption for reason. Under the warped logic of fear, anything is better than the uncertain.

isaac lidsky

And that so true. The minute I read it, I felt like it had tapped directly into my soul. That is exactly what depression has done to me. It’s made me so timid and cowardly that time and time again I choose a certain negative over an uncertain positive.

This certainty bias is positively crippling. It narrows one’s options down to only the things about which one can be absolutely certain and that’s a mighty short list.

In fact, I will go further and say that it makes you feel like if it isn’t a sure thing, it will be a negative outcome. Those are the only two options.

In other words, if there is any chance of a negative outcome, the outcome WILL be negative. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong – Murphy’s Law translated into a soul crushing personal philosophy.

Clearly, this is wildly irrational and makes no sense. Logically, there is a huge difference between “uncertain” and “doomed”.

I mean, if you had a 99.9 percent chance to win the lottery, you’d go for it, right?

But even contemplating my own absurd example, I feel an all too familiar clutching fear in the pit of my stomach at the thought of that tiny, tiny risk.

So clearly we are not talking about reason here. We are talking about something far more ancient and primitive that was there long before reason showed up.

We are talking about the fundamental feeling of not being safe that comes from childhood trauma like my rape.

When that motherfucker raped me, he shattered my innocence and my trust in the world, and left me in a permanent (so far) state of fear.

No matte what is happening in the rest of my mind, there is still that crying little boy who is freaking out 24/7 and who dares not ever relax or sleep because that’s when the demons that chase him through the night will GET him.

He’s just a scared little animal. And until I can find a way to reach him and comfort him and soothe him and make him feel safe, that scared little animal at the heart of my psyche will continue to drive the rest of my mind unto madness.

It’s going to be okay, little guy. You’re home now, where it’s safe and warm and everybody loves you. The long dark night is over and you are here in the daylight. Your bed is made, there’s delicious and nourishing food in the kitchen, and you can have all the cuddles and petting and affection you need, no questions asked.

You made it, little guy. You did it. You escaped.

Now come here and give me a hug.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Did our Xmas dinner shopping last night.

Sav-On, alas, also did not have pre-cooked turkey. Of any kind. I mean, I can understand them not having fully cooked birds.

But they didn’t even have the pre-cooked turkey meat in big slices, like it just came off the bird, either.

They didn’t even have the usual rotisserie chickens! You know what we ended up with?

Chicken strips. Fully cooked breaded chicken strips. Like KFC’s kitchen tenders. ^[1]

Delicious they will be, but festive they ain’t.

We also got some instant mashed potatoes, some good ol Stove Top Stuffing, and some powdered gravy.

I did not even know that was a thing til I saw it last night. No idea how good it will be, but all you have to do to make it is mix the powder with boiling water, so what the hell.

I, of course, will be doing the cooking for our feast. I am the most culinary member of this household and I love to cook for people I love.

I get real emotional about it, though, so I plan to do everything slowly and carefully because if I ruin a dish, I will be a sobbing wreck.

I am also pondering doing a dessert. Preferably something no-bake so that I don’t have to struggle with our finicky oven.

You preheat it. Open the door to put in what you want to bake. Then close the door, and the heat does not come back on.

So god damned frustrating. I then have to thump the stove to get the heat to come back on, and over time it took more and more force to do it, so I gave up.

I love to bake. But not under those conditions.

I also got some stuff for my own personal Xmas. Naughty stuff I should not have.

But Xmas day is the one day of the year where I eat and drink whatever the hell I want, and I am going to exploit the fuck out of that.

So I got myself a Pot of Gold (a box of chocolates, for you non-Canadians), and some mini peanut butter cups, and some Oh Henry! nut cluster type things.

The cups and clusters I will share.

The Pot of Gold I will not. (Mine! Mine! Precious!)

Well, except for the ones I don’t like.

I also got myself a bottle of champagne^[2], and there is a funny story there.

I was looking for the champagne and the lady that worked at the beer and wine section of Sav-on asked me if I needed help

I did, so I said “Yes, where’s the champagne?”.

She asked me what kind I wanted. I said “Dry. ”

So she pointed out two different kinds to me…. both of which were $26.

And that’s where things got hilariously bourgeoisie because that is way more than I planned on spending. I was thinking $15 tops.

But I am way too middle class to actually tell her I wanted something cheaper, so I grabbed me a $26 bottle of fizzy wine.

Then later, I wanted to sneak back and look for a cheaper bottle, but I figured she would still be there and if she saw me doing it I would just die, so I didn’t.

And that’s why I have a $26 bottle of champagne chilling in the fridge.

You can take the boy out of the middle class…..

More after the break.

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Eating (in) Peace

Finally got around to ordering from the Peaceful Restaurant.

Yes, that’s its real name. And yes, it’s an Asian cuisine place. Western restaurants never have cool, simple, direct names like that.

Western restaurant names don’t have adjectives.

I had been meaning to order from this place for a while because it is by far the highest rated place on DoorDash in my neighborhood. That’s why it keeps coming up on the first line of suggestions when I log in.

So now and then, I would click on it and check out their menu. And while some of the dishes looked quite tasty, there was nothing there that I recognized and so I chickened out and ordered from somewhere else.

But this time I noticed this menu item :

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Sweet Soy Glazed Chicken

Crispy chicken tossed in a reduced sweet soy sauce with ginger and garlic.

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And that’s my jam, dawg. My mother used to make this amazingly delish honey, soy, and garlic sauce for special occasions, usually to go on spare ribs.

So if this sauce is anywhere near as good, I will be in heaven.

Seriously, you’d eat the phone book if it had this sauce on it. It was that good.

On the medical front, yesterday my GP, Doctor Chao, left me a couple of messages asking me to contact him ASAP about test results.

And he sounded kind of stressed in the messages. Worried, even.

I tried not to read too much into that, but failed.

So I called him back today, and phew, my CT scan didn’t show anything to worry about. Apparently he was stressed out about something else.

My guess is that he, like me, does not like leaving voicemail messages. I always panic a bit at having to suddenly summarize what I had planned to talk about.

Then again, when my social anxiety is very bad, I actually prefer voice mail. Waaay less socially scary. There’s been times when I wished I could go straight to voice mail instead of risking actually talking to someone.

What can I say, social anxiety disorder is SAD.

I still haven’t tried either of my fast-acting anti-anxiety meds. I think I have lost my nerve. So now it will be less of a “this should be an interesting experience” thing and more of a “kamikaze! Today I die! AAAAAAAAH!” pushing myself off the diving board thing.

Much harder to do.

But I have to know.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Kind of forgot to think of something to write about. Hmmm.

I already used up all my personal narrative relaying my medical misadventures in yesterday’s blog post.

Those posts are always easier because I am working off real events instead of digging deep to find psychological toxic waste I can dig up and dispose of properly.

Now, I have to actual think of stuff.

Well, one thing : will be taking my last Celphalex when I finish my meal.

And good frigging riddance. I have no doubt that it’s a highly effective antibiotic with a low rate of serious side effects, but the trivial side effects are fucking annoying.

There’s the suppression of appetite, which is why I take it AFTER meals. I already have a somewhat unreliable appetite so adding Cephalex to the mix just makes that worse.

Still, at least I haven’t had to deal with the Demon Hunger my diabetes causes sometimes for a while, and that’s a blessing.

I’d rather deal with forcing myself to eat when I don’t want to than deal with being massively hungry even after eating a full meal all the time.

The other side effect is one that I had forgotten from the previous time I was on Cephalex : it makes me really tired. Not in a “do not operate heavy machinery or even light machinery for that matter, in fact just stay home altogether” sense, but it still really drags me own and is like, a total bummer, man.

Hello, The Seventies!

So I am looking forward to being finished with this course of Cephalex. Took longer than it should have because I missed a bunch of doses via sheer absentmindedness, plus having difficult adjusting my routine, but it will finally be over.

I just had a nice thought : if I ever exit my depression, maybe I won’t be so absentminded any more. That would be wonderful. I consider my absentmindedness to be my primary flaw in the sense that it is the one that causes me the most trouble and the most personal anguish.

Because no matter how hard I try to keep things together, I still forget things. Importantt things. Combine that with not noticing things in the first place and I have suffered a lot of humiliation and guilt, not to mention frustration with myself, because I go around in this thick mental fog all the time.

Would be awful nice to clear that shit up. But I know that this numbing fog will only go away when I don’t need it to protect me from reality and shut out overstimulating influences any more.

I know where I stand in this illusion of mine. I know why my heart is frozen and why so many of my psyche’s important linkages just plain don’t work.

The real price of progress (both spiritual and psychological) is always consciousness. Waking up to reality means forsaking the comfort of dreams, and that is definitely going to hurt like fuck at first.

And for me, in order to finally feel the sun on my soul, I am going to have to feel all the pain that the numbness has been blocking for me all these years.

This cold, cold island of mine might be killing me but it has its uses.

Just talking about this has me feeling like there’s a cold wind blowing over my heart.

But that’s the numbness melting, so I welcome it.

Let spring come, no matter how much it hurts.

Because then, this shit will be over.

More after the break.

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Tall and Free

Elza the Sharp viewed the circle of wizards around her with detached, indulgent politeness. They knew that she knew that she did not have to do this. She was perfectly free to walk away from Skylach Tower forever without so much as goodbye note, let alone this sad little inquisition, and it was only manners and a desire to leave absolutely nothing, not even a unfinished formality, that was keeping her here.

Of course, they had chosen her mentor Dolach to lead the ceremony.

“Elza Pazzo Fremal, is it true that you seek permission….”

A sharp glance from Elza caused him to retrench.

“…that is, that you seek….um, to exit Skylach Tower on this day?”

She nodded. “I do. “

Dolach nodded, took a deep, steadying breath, then said “By what right do you seek exit, Elza the Sharp?”

By the right of my being three times as powerful as all of you combined, she thought. Because that means there is nothing you can do to stop me. Because for all your strutting and preening about being the almighty Council On High, in this situation, you are, at long last, completely powerless.

“By my right as a Free Mage. ” she said. “This council granted me that title itself. I have completed all the requirements and passed all examinations for exit, and I now claim the right that I thus earned.”

Doloch nodded solemnly. “There is no doubt that said right will be granted. ” he said, “once the ceremony is complete.”

Elza’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What more remains?”

Dolach smiled indulgently. “But a trifle. Archminster Adaway?”

Dolach sat, and Adaway rose to say, “Do you, Elza the sharp, recognize that once you leave Skylach, you may never return, on pain of death?”

Elza nodded. “I do. And good riddance. “

Dolach pointedly ignored that remarks. “Archminster Tolof?”

Tolof said, “And do you recognize that when you leave the Tower, you will be leaving most of your power behind?”

Elza nodded. “I do. What good is power in a cage? You can keep it.”

Dolof nodded, “Then by the power of this Council, I grant you exit. “

The floor under Elza became suffused with a golden glow, and she smiled coldly, and said, “Farewell, my…. colleagues. I will not miss this place.”

With that, she vanished in a flurry of sparks.

“How long do you think it will take her to figure out she is still here?” asked Adaway,

“Hard to say.” sighed Dolach. “Depends on which is more powerful – her pride or her suspicion. That’s the most powerful illusion spell known to this Council, and no one should be able to pierce it. But our Miss Sharp has a way of….exceeding expectations, does she not?”

All laughed at his humorous understatement.

“Meeting adjourned!” said Dolach.

And all shuffled out.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Went to the wound care clinic today.

They made me take of my foxy mask and put on a cheap disposable one they provided, just like in the ER.

Apparently that’s the rule now in medical facilities. Dammit.

I just bought my foxy mask and it’s really cute! Anyhow.

Oh, and the new Coastal Health Center is freaking amazing. Everything seems professional without seeming oppressive or clinical or both. The hallways are carpeted and the color scheme is soothing and friendly. Everything seems fresh and clean and neat and tidy without seeming harsh or hostile or “antiseptic”.

I mean, obviously, I want medical facilities to be literally antiseptic. I want them to be as antiseptic as possible.

I mean antiseptic in a bad way. Like, hostile to life.

You get the idea.

After finding the place (which was NOT labeled Wound Care Clinic anywhere… good thing I met a nurse who told me where it was!), I waited in the “waiting room” (read : random bit of hallway with some chairs in it) for a few minutes before a nice nurse named Shirley came out and told me to follow her.

Once in the…. let’s say multi-purpose health facility, she had me wash my hands (with actual soap and water… what a luxury!) and then follow her into an exam room. She looked at my foot, and concluded, unsurprisingly, that there was nothing she could due with the problem area of my foot because it was not, technically, a wound.

Well duh. It’s currently a very calloused area with maybe a little bleeding underneath. It hurts to walk on it and it is definitely not healthy, but it ain’t a wound.

I was already wondering why the heck Young Doctor Jenssen sent me there in the first place. I think he was just nervous and unsure of himself so he was throwing stuff at me just in case.

Obviously, should it become a wound, I will be back there pronto. Possibly via another trip to the ER if it is painful and/or scary enough.

I told Shirley I was going to get an appointment with a podiatrist. And I am. The one that shares an office with my GP.

I think his name is Doctor Lu.

I figure it’s time to have a specialist look at it.

I just hope I don’t end up accidentally kicking him. My feet are very sensitive and I have kicked the air a few times when self-examining and I would hate to end up booting this poor person in the head when they are palpating my tender tootsies.

Besides, until I get my diabetes under control, it’s probably good to have a podiatrist in my coven of specialists because more foot nastiness is sure to come.

Still working on the diabetes thing. Right now, I have all my components for injecting my insulin like I am supposed to, but I have a lot of mindless aversion to hack my way through before I can actually act sensibly.

Man I hate that stuff.

More after the break,

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The story continues

After the wound care clinic, Julian drove me to my bank. And miracle of miracles, there was almost no lineup. So I got to go in and cashez le cheque.

If, like previous times, there had been a line going out of the door and around the side of the building, I would have said fuck it and cashed my cheque another day.

With my sore foot and how the cold air hurts my lungs, there was no way I was going to wait in a long line out in the cold of winter.

Or what passes for it here.

After that. I had my Sunday shopping to do. The shopping I didn’t get done yesterday because I was too sick to go out.

So we did that at Pricemart, which is across two parking lots from my bank.

We drove there. I’m not making THAT mistake again. Walking that route damn near killed me and is how I discovered how fucking feeble I am now.

Shopping went well. Very tiring for me, but that’s no longer a surprise. Whatever.

I’m fading away and I can’t even make myself care. Not really.

But I got my usual stuff. Trail mixes, Smartfood popcorn, my diet sodas, and my sugar free cookies from good ol’ Voortman.

Being diabetic has made me almost pathetically grateful to any company that makes a decent sugar free dessert type thing.

Once I had my stuff, I went hunting for a pre-cooked turkey for our Xmas dinner. What with the Covid stalking the land, we won’t be going to Joe’s family’s house for Xmas dinner, so we will have to make it happen on our own.

Sadly, Pricemart not only did not have pre-cooked turkeys, they seemed entirely unfamiliar with the basic concepts involved.

You’d think we’d asked where to find the cat’s milk.

In fact, they didn’t have many turkeys at all. Just one medium bin of them.

And, weirdly, they all said “Fresh young turkey” on them. Like, I get the “fresh” part but it seems very odd to insist they be young.

It’s a tad suspect, if you ask me.

And I have to confess, as the Asian man behind the butcher’s counter was disbelieving the existence of pre-cooked turkeys and I was standing in an area marked “Asian frozen foods” in enormous letters on the wall, I felt a touch of cultural isolation.

I am used to seeing enormous bins of turkeys of all sizes when I go to the supermarket this time of year.

Anyhow, no turkey for us. Then, when I got home, I get this phone call from the head nurse from the wound care clinic, who proceeded to explain to me everything Shirley had explained to me back at the damn clinic, only even slower.

That’s the thing about explaining things in a language that is not your native tongue. You have a much smaller vocabulary than a native speaking of said language, and so you have to use a lot more words to explain things.

Reminds me of the Simple English Wikipedia.

And that’s it for the medical portion of my day.

Tune in tomorrow for whatever the fuck is going to go wrong next. Because, as is always the case,

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow,