As I speak, it’s 31 degrees out. Yesterday it was 35 pretty much all afternoon.

There are places in the interior where it was FORTY FUCKING FIVE. For you Americans and oldsters, that’s 114 F.

When I was growing up on Prince Edward Island, only the very hottest days in the summer broke 30. That’s when the severe weather warning went out about staying in the shade, staying hydrated. checking in on the old and the infirm, and so on.

When I lived in Silly Con Valley, the highest I experienced was 120 F, which is 48 C for us crazy Canucks.

But that was a dry heat. Because during the summer, the Bay area is a FUCKING DESERT. That shit’s not supposed to happen up here where there’s trees.

Welcome to the new normal in our climate shifted world. This just what every summer will be like for a long time. In fact, it will probably get a lot worse.

Meanwhile, I am a fat dude with a heart condition and no AC trying to survive the afternoons by hydrating aggressively and keeping a fan pointed at my head prettymuch all the time.

It’s an inelegant solution but it gets me through the day.

But I am once more pondering investing in an AC unit of some sort. A good one could do wonders for my health and comfort levels.

And given my weak and fragile (literal) heart, whatever I can do to minimize the stress and strain on my systems is a good thing

So I will shop around for one of these reasonably priced portable AC units. It doesn’t have to be super powerful. Strong enough to keep half a master bedroom cool would be just fine by me.

I hardly ever use the other half.

Went to see Doctor Caswell, my diabetes and sleep disorders specialist (aka Fat Person Doctor), today.

Had to take a cab ’cause Julian was off dog walking.

No big deal, really. $10 each way with tip. I can afford it. And I am not healthy enough to take transit right now.

I’m starting to wonder how much of my psychological issues are actually physiological. Maye my feeling of being weak and timid and always crumbling under pressure is actually the result of my narrowed heart arteries.

Maybe this Wound I keep going on about is actually cardiosclerosis.

If so, then my triple bypass might do a lot more than save my life. It might give me a whole new lease on life. I might come up off that operating table with a lion’s roar!

Or at least with some goddamned energy I can use, and maybe a more robust engagement with life full of bonhomie and esprit now that I am no longer subconsciously keeping myself from dying.

And if that’s the case, once it is safe (so like, approximately 4 months after the op) I am going to seriously get into exercise.

I need a physical outlet for my energies. Something I can just pour my excess of nervous energy into that will do me some long term good as well.

I would be way saner if I didn’t have all that crazy intellectual electricity coursing around my brain just looking to discharge into depression or anxiety any more.

Why can’t it discharge into bliss? Or at least happiness?

Maybe that’s what people really get out of meditation and such. They teach their brains to spark joy instead of pain.

Sounds good to me.

More after the break.

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Mysteries of the modern era

So I am ordering tonight’s meal from the 711 and I need to order a drink.

Not because I need the beverage. Because I need the container.

See, I use Double Big Gulp cups as my drinking glasses. They seem to last about a month before starting to crack around the rim.

My previous one cracked last Saturday, so tonight was the night to replace it.

When selecting my beverage, I noticed Pepsi Zero was an option. Never had it before, so I figured, what the hell.

But now my beverage has arrived and it tastes absurdly sweet to me. And not just sweet but sticky-sweet, with a faint berry aftertaste.

So I am thinking that ain’t Pepsi Zero because it tastes sugar as fuck.

There is also the fact that my lips have gone numb. But I have tested my blood sugar and it doesn’t seem to be spiking. At least not yet.

And the thing is, because I’ve never had Pepsi Zero before, I can’t say for sure that what is in my cup isn’t it.

Maybe it always tastes that sweet. Seems highly unlikely but it’s possible.

Regardless, that shit is going down the sink, because sugar or no, it’s disgusting. Like the worst drink from the worst stall at the worst carnival in the world.

But if it is NOT Pepsi Zero in that cup and is instead something sugary, then I have got the basis for a serious lawsuit on my hands because that shit could have killed me.

No word a lie. I hardly even eat carbs any more, let alone something with actual sugar in it. Sugary LIQUIDS are what they give people whose blood sugar is crashing because that’s the fastest way to raise someone’s blood sugar.

And I’m trying to go in the opposite direction!

Thing is, though, is that it’s probably not 7-11’s fault. The most likely culprit is my Door Dash driver^[1] pouring me the wrong drink when he picked up my order.

It’s super easy to do because it can be hard to tell which spigot the cup is under, especially if you are tall like I am.

I feel so conflicted. Part of me thirsts for justice. I could have died. This shit might have done me harm yet. I am worried about this happening to others.

On the other hand, I don’t want to get some average person just trying to make a living in trouble over an honest mistake.

Oh god. I just looked it up. My Dasher’s name is Michelle.

Now I am even more conflicted. For reasons which are most likely sexist.

I will hang on to the beverage and get Joe and Julian to taste test it later tonight.

If they think it’s sugary, I am going to have to officially complain.

I mean. my lips are STILL tingling.

That can’t be good!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I’ve always had more brains than I knew what to do with.

That’s not the first time I’ve said that and it won’t be the last.

Because it’s true. My intellectually capacities have never been put under serious strain, let alone be truly taxed. Even in university and at VFS, my abilities were not particularly put under strain.

I am capable of so much more. But life has never asked it of me and I am not yet capable of demanding it of myself.

To be honest, I don’t even know what that would look like. I mean, I’m a finite being with finite capacities, so there must be things which are within my abilities in kind but beyond them in scope, but I cannot imagine what they might be.

Because I have never encountered them. There is the rare anomaly like that linguistics course where I crashed and burned due to nobody being able to properly explain things to me in a way that didn’t rely on my understanding other things they couldn’t explain.

In that case, I was a victim of my own inability to proceed when I don’t understand something. Process halt, logic error, will resume on correction.

But for the most part, I have easily dominated whatever the academic world has thrown at me. Didn’t even have to think about it. Came naturally to me.

So no wonder I can’t imagine what being challenged is like. I have no basis for comparison. It has yet to happen.

And I suppose another type of person might decide to just sit back and glory in their own ineffable awesomeness, smug in the sure knowledge of their superiority.

But… ick. Not only does that sound fatuous and obnoxious and gross, it also seems boring as hell.

So another solution would be to venture out into the cosmos in search of challenge and adventure and really wild stuff.

Which sounds about right. But then I am faced with that infinite hallway of infinite doors again. I would have to pick a direction (or an arena, or a cause, or whatever) and I don’t have the kind of chutzpah to do that yet.

Maybe after my operation, I won’t be so damned weak.

Talked with my surgeon Doctor Nuen (sp?) this morning. We talked over options and what is going to happen to me.

He freaked me out by saying there was a 2 to 3 percent chance of death…. as well as other complications like infection, kidney issues, and so on.

Phew! I was sweating there for about five minutes before he clarified.

I mean, even if my odds of survival were that bad, my odds of survival without the operation would be a whole lot worse, so I would still have gone with it.

But still. Phew!

He says that I will be in the hospital for 4-5 days after the operation and that the operation will come in a month or two.

Fine. I am totally on board with this now. It could happen tomorrow for all I care.

Rewinding a thread, I still don’t know what to do with all this brain power.

Take over the world?

I’ll give it some thought.

More after the break.

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Would I give it up?

This towering intellect of mine, that is? Would I give it up in favor of a normal IQ if it meant I finally got to be happy?

Well…. no. Tempting, but…. no. It’s far too big a part of me to give up.

I mean, in theory, nothing could be more important that happiness and therefore happiness is worth whatever it costs you, no matter how steep the price.

But in reality. even if you thought you might be happier without it, you still wouldn’t give up your right arm.

It’s just too big a price to pay for anything, even happiness.

Sure wish I could turn it off now and then, though. Maybe that’s why so many of us sensitive artistic types end up getting addicted to drugs and booze.

We use them as ways to make ourselves stupid enough to relax for once.

It sounds like a joke but it’s also true.

Of course, the other solution is to somehow tame and harness these wild brains of mine so that they don’t cause me so much pain from being underused.

Which sounds a lot like the more cerebral angle of spiritual growth to me. The whole deal with expanding your mind and connecting to the cosmic consciousness and all that good ol New Age stuff.

I mean, at least on paper, encompassing the universal vibration and feeling the heartbeat of creation that drives the breath of life in all living things throughout the universe should be enough to keep anyone’s mind busy, right?

God I hope so. To find out otherwise would be devastating.

I’d be willing to follow the teachings of a guru in theory.

I don’t consider myself to the the most enlightened, wise, or smart person in the world, after all. at least on good days.

But in practice, they would have a very high bar to clear. They would have to convince me that they truly know something I don’t and that they can teach me that something if I can just sit down and shut up for long enough, and listen.

They would need to be able to ask me a question I can’t answer because it’s something I have never thought of that way before.

More or less the same thing I want in a therapist, really.

If they can do that, they can at least get me to listen to them.

If they can do it more than once, I might just hang around a while.

If they can do it regularly, I might just call them sensei.

I mean, there must be wise people out there who know how to handle people with out of control monkey brains like me.

People who grasp what it’s like to feel like the conductor on an out of control train.

People who might even know how to get that sumbitch back under control.

Maybe even know how to get it to slow down enough to let me off.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Came across this video earlier today :

Obviously, with a title like that, I had to check it out.

I mean, what kind of bad media fan would I be if I didn’t?

And so here’s some comments I came up with while watching it :

Discovering I am not the only person who finds Ob-la-di annoying feels good. But finding out people HATE it and think it is the WORST Beatles song leaves me feeling very weird. It’s nowhere near THAT bad. It’s just a tad obnoxious.

*blink* Sussudio? That harmless bit of fluff? What the intentional fuck? It’s a silly pop song but that’s its only crime.

Don’t Worry Be Happy, I get. The song is still annoyingly perky,. But at the time, it caught such massive hate because it seemed to epitomize the very specific kind of vapid, empty-headed positivity that made people hate on the Care Bears. I know I hate the song at the time for those reasons. And you have to admit, despite being this hyper-intelligent music professor who lectures at the Julliard *for fun*, McFerrin sounds like a total idiot in the song.

They are totally right that MacArthur Park is one of the absolute worst songs ever. It is so incredibly over-dramatic, cheesy, punishingly hand-wringingly earnest, fake, and overproduced. It’s so bad, in fact, that it stands out as a fascinating mystery as to how something like it could be made. Because truly bad art transcends mere incompetence and instead embodies reverse genius. Just as powerful as regular genius, but in the opposite direction. Like The Room.

Here’s some more entries from the Wikipedia article in question.

Ebony and Ivory by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder. Serious what the intended fuck here again. I guess people thought it was too earnest and obvious? Dude, it’s a song about racial harmony by two of the greatest songwriters ever. Chill.

We Built This City by Starship. Not the first time I have seen this song catch hate and I still don’t get it. It’s not even obnoxious. A little too bright, I guess?

But then there’s this genuine gem of awfulness, and I say that as a connoisseur :

Finally, one I consider to be genuinely awful besides MacArthur Park. And I am not saying it’s MacArthur Park bad – few things are.

But holy shit, is Agadoo bad. And on so many levels. It’s trite, repetitive, catchy in the worst possible way, cheap, badly produced, sung by two blond robot clones with nothing between their ears but wind, and those are the ugliest giant fruit musician costumes I have ever seen.

And that’s saying something.

But what makes it truly dastardly is that you can totally imagine it being a huge hit with idiots. It’s like the Achy Breaky Heart of evil vacation resort songs.

And being the perverse mofo I am, I thus consider it a valuable find. I’m glad I came across it. It stands out as one of the worst of the worst and for that, I salute it and whatever evil forces spawned it.

Way to go, guys. You really lowered the bar.

What else. There’s What’s Up by Four Non Blondes.

That’s this song, in case you don’t recognize the title :

Love that song. The haters can go fuck themselves sideways in a hurricane.

Nookie by Limp Bizkit. I get it. I like this song despite Durst’s whiny fucking vocals and lyrics. This from the band that brought us Break Something? Sheesh.

Who Let The Dogs Out? by Baha Men. Yeah, ditto. Yes, I know being barked at all time when the song was everywhere was rough on the nerves, and it certainly gives one the impression it’s a stupid, mindless song, but I now find it to be a rockin’ summer dance tune with loads of energy and spirit.

That’s enough for now. I will share my theories as to why some songs attract this kind of hate in the second half.

More after the break.

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Additional content regarding music

First, why some seemingly harmless songs get enormous hate :

One factor : perkiness. Perkiness irritates cranky people. I know this because I used to be one of those people. But then I realized the world needs all the perking up it can get and there is a vast difference between what is morally wrong and what is merely very annoying to me personally.

So for the most part, I let perky people and things perk away unmolested unless there is actual harm involved.

Many people do not draw this distinction, however, and the profession of critic attracts exactly the kind of cranky person prone to hyperbole that will take great pleasure in crapping all over the annoyingly upbeat item du jour.

As for whether bad music is getting worse, no it is not, Alfo Media. It just seems worse because it’s more recent and you are still sick of some of its tropes.

Those older song’s like O-Bla-Di seem harmless to us now because we now encounter them completely free of historical context and can judge them on their own merits.

I’ve said before that its possible that no art can truly be evaluated objectively until it is completely and totally obsolete.

Plus, the sweeping tide of history winnows out all but the greatest songs of an era, causing the phenomenon of people thinking all the music of an era was great because all the music they remember and/or know of from that era is great.

And obviously the average song of today is going to pale in comparison versus the very best of bygone days.

So no, music is not getting worse. Neither the good stuff or the bad stuff is any better or worse than the stuff of yesteryear.

It might be less to your liking, but that’s a far cry from being objectively worse. After all, the older you get, the larger your trove of music (or whatever) you really like gets, and the more you narrow in on what exactly you like in things.

Every new thing therefore has to compete against all your favorite things and the older you get, the stiffer the competition gets, until new things don’t stand a chance.

And just like that, boom, mind closed, guess what, you’re old.

The only way I know to combat this is to judge everything on its own merits and not by how it compares to everything else you love.

That way liking a new thing never feels like I am “betraying” an old thing and I can continue to expand my mind and my tastes ad infinitum.

Or at least until I get too damned old to give a shit any more.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Been having one of my sleepy days. Been sleeping a lot lately, actually.

That in and of itself is not worrisome. I mean, it’s not like I am missing out on anything by sleeping all the time.

I am more or less exactly as productive asleep as I am awake.

But I feel like at least some of this sleep is escapist, and that worries me. I have been fleeing reality by retreating into sleep and that means my depression’s pretty bad.

Sleep, as I have noted many times before, is basically just death without the commitment. Escaping into sleep is a sign that I have gotten to the point where I don’t want to deal with anything at all.

Not even my usual low stress life of video games and blogging and snacks.

Which is pretty pathetic.

But not unexpected. I predicted that things would get worse before they got better. The numbness has finally retreated far enough to let me truly feel all the deferred pain I have been storing up for all these years.

And like I told my therapist Doctor Costin on Thursday, the only way to get rid of old pain is to feel it, and that’s never fun.

Always worth it, though. Catharsis always is. Afterwards you feel cleaner and lighter and stronger and more like yourself.

It’s kind of like throwing up. It’s horrible while it is happening but you feel so much better without all that toxic crap in your system.

In that context, lying around feeling miserable is the most productive thing I do.

Which is also pretty pathetic.

Plus there is that growing restlessness I have been nurturing for a long time now. I protect it and encourage it to grow because I know that it is my true strong passionate life force struggling to express itself and I want it to get strong enough to break free of the cage of depression and bust me out of here.

Fundamentally, the opposite of depression isn’t happiness, it’s vitality, and therefore it is the vital energy of the id that can set me free.

My ego and superego have had all the power for far too long and have proven themselves to be incompetent, corrupt, and deranged.

And really, how much worse can irrationality be? Judging by my current life, I do not have one hell of a lot to lose.

Going full on crazy might make for a refreshing change, and lead to a highly stimulating change in scenery and meeting a lot of new people.

Admittedly, some of those new people would be delusions. As would some of the scenery, come to think of it.

But the point is that it would make things interesting for a while.

Alas, that is not a real option. I am almost pathologically stable and sane. As amusing as the idea of saying fuck it and leaving reality behind might be to me, I know all that will really happen is that I will keep slowly forcing my mind open a little at a time and continue to eke my way towards getting the fuck over myself.

Oh well, at least I have impending major surgery to lighten up my life.

Which is, indeed, incredibly pathetic.

More after the break.

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My radioactive power core

Except that Windows spellchecker recognizes it. Dammit.

Anyhow, so I finally remembered that I was going to pick up where I left off yesterday (kinda) and talk about my high energy restless id and how it has been suppressed for so long that I honestly believed I was dead inside.

it sure felt that way sometimes. Still does. But now that the Ice Age of my depressed is retreating, I can feel how wrong that was because now I can feel that shining burning fusion core of energy roiling deep within my soul and I am never going to be fooled into thinking it ain’t there again.

Even at my most hopeless and numb and suppressed, I will know that my sun never stops shining even when it’s midnight over the tundra, and that no night ever lasts forever and the sun will shine again before too long.

All I got to do is wait. That’s it. Wait. Simplest thing in the world. Even when I am too tired to fight, I can wait.

Make no conclusions. Perform no judgments. Make absolutely no predictions about the future based on how I feel at that moment.

Because I know that will change. Not even bad things last forever. The tide will rise or fall, the flux will twitch into a new configuration, and the world will feel like a totally different place before too long.

If there is one thing I can count on in regards to my inner world, it’s chaos. Change. The heartbeat of creativity, the generator of possibilities, the maddening spinning changing jewel that I must remain free in order to change and keep up with.

It’s very nuts when you think about it. Maybe that’s why so many of us highly creative types are crazy.

You have to be crazy to have the kind of nuclear fireball that powers high level creativity inside. You also have to have what it takes to tame and harness that motherfucking thing in order to get it to do something interesting or useful.

Or both, if you can manage it.

I have given a lot of thought to where creativity comes from. Like Nietzsche said, you must have chaos within your heart if you wish to give birth to a dancing star.

I mean, duh.

Peaceful thoughts are not creative thoughts. Only that spark of life I have been going on about can create something truly creative and new.

Only the id can be that prime mover that sets everything in motion and powers the mighty machine that is top level creativity.

All that stuff in books about how to unlock your creative potential is nothing but mental masturbation and worse than useless.

Want to unlock your creative potential? Become a more interesting person

Because true creativity isn’t technique. It’s not something you can learn or tap or “unlock” via some words in a book.

Because it’s part of who you are. It can be pursued, but not in the detached, safe. clinical way in which one might learn to crochet.

In fact, pursuing it looks a lot like pursuing personal spiritual growth. As such, it involves a lot of heavy and complicated emotional shit that isn’t safe, easy, controllable, predictable. or even normal.

What you seek is deep within these dark woods, traveler.

Enter at your own risk.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I’ve been training my whole life for this : I have to take it easy and be lazy or I will have a fucking heart attack and die.

Ironically, it’s that “training” that led to this situation in the first place.

Yes, the irony is rife in this situation, and comes in many forms.

For example, I had just started getting back into exercising regularly for the first time in forever when the angiogram results shut that shit right now.

I was trying so hard to get my blood sugar down.

Speaking of which, went to the pharmacy to buy a new sensor for my FreeStyle Libre glucometer today. You have to buy a new sensor every 2 weeks for reasons that are complete and utter bullshit and just an excuse to jack your insurance plan for $100 every couple of weeks.

That’s right. The little fuckers cost $100. And they only stop working every two weeks because their software tells them too. Grr.

However, I did not end up buying one. But the reason why is awesome.

See, it turns out that my glucometer, the FreeStyle Libre, has a competitor, the Dexcom G6, which it turns out IS covered by my BC Disability medical plan and will therefore cost me not a god damn thing.

There’ll be a wait, though. Which sucks. First I need my endocrinologist, Doctor Caswell, to fill out a form and send it in, which will happen when I see her Tuesday, then there will be a three or four week wait, then I can get the thing.

However, I will ask Doctor Caswell if she has another sensor or two for my FreeStyle Pocket Gouger when I see her. She had lots of free samples she was eager to give out when I saw her before, so the answer should be yes.

That will tide me over till the G6 is approved with my having to fork out $100 for a sensor that should last forever.

Or be a fuckton cheaper.

So that’s good news. I also bought some “baby aspirin”. or as I prefer to call them, low-dose daily aspirin.

Because honestly, if I go gobbling up all the baby aspirin, where will the future generations of adult aspirin come from?

I’m just looking out for the future of the aspirin fishery, both commercial and sport.

Glad I finally remembered that I was supposed to be taking these little aspirinettes. my GP, Doctor Chao, told me to start taking them right away the day of the angiogram.

Which was um…. like, a while ago. Ooops.

Oh well, you can’t correct past mistakes. All you can do is move on and try to do better.

And I have them now, and will take one a day in order to thin my blood and reduce the chance of a heart attack or stroke.

Meanwhile, all I have to do is somehow figure out how one “takes it easy” when one already lives the lifestyle of a particularly lazy invalid.

Of course, due to my perverse and ornery nature, I now want to get outside and exercise more than ever.

Because like Rage Against the Machine says :

I really wish life had ever given me something to rebel against.

I would have been so good at it!

More after the break.

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This space left blank

I swear I had a top notch idea for what I was going to write about here tonight, but I didn’t write it down and now I have forgotten it.

I am telling you, the biggest lie I tell myself the most often and that does the most damage is “I don’t need to jot that down, I’ll remember it. “

Bullshit I will. That strategy has failed far, far more often than it has succeeded and yet somehow, some toxic combination of optimism, self-confidence, and laziness convinces me to just keep trying it.

Why it’s bound to work one of these times, right? Law of averages and all that.

I think it stems from that most universal and pervasive human foibles, our inability to imagine being in a mental state different than the one we are currently in.

Maybe we just don’t have room for more than one mental state in our minds. I dunno.

So when I have the brilliant idea, it’s super clear in my mind and it seems downright ludicrous to imagine it fading over time and getting lost in the shuffle of that incredibly busy post office I call my mind.

But of course, shit changes. In my case, rapidly. Before long, my mind has moved so far ahead that I can barely relate to the person who had the idea.

My mind is like the Mississippi at flood : wide, deep, AND rapid, all at the same time.

So if I want to keep my genius ideas for later use, I have to step away from my raging rapids long enough to write shit down.

Obviously. But as I mentioned earlier, I am an ornery cuss, and my highly indulged mind doesn’t want to slow down long enough to take notes.

This is why I dream of having a stenographer. Granted, I would still have to slow down long enough to put it into words and speak them, but that seems a lot better than having to find the notes, open them, find my place in them. click there, then start putting my thoughts into words I then type.

Makes me want to scream and tear my hair out just thinking about it.

Which I suppose would seem incomprehensible to someone with a more linear and methodical kind of mind. They might well prefer a slower and more plodding pace because it would give them time to plan and plot each step.

Not me, though. I gots to zoom zoom zoom. My brain only truly kicks into high gear when I can accelerate freely.

Slow and steady is not an option. I have a very high minimum speed.

But when I have plenty of space and a nice long straight track ahead of me…

I can go warp speed, baby. ZOOM.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Oh yeah. That.

Today is Therapy Thursday, and I told my therapist, Doctor Costin, all about my heart issues, upcoming (but not yet scheduled) open heart surgery, and my discomfort with the idea of having my goddamned sternum cracked.

That just seems like the sort of thing that is not supposed to happen.

But that’s true of all surgery, really.

I mean, the entire idea that someone can stab you back to health is pretty damned weird in and of itself when you think about it.

Anyhoo, Doc Costin mentioned the fact that I might not make it off the operating table, and that is something that I had not really considered yet.

This is one of those rare circumstances where being somewhat suicidal comes in handy because the idea of dying doesn’t scare me all that much.

I mean, I (mostly) don’t want to die. I want to stick around and have more fun and more time with my friends and some vague chance of actually growing up eventually.

It could happen.

But the prospect doesn’t bother me as much as it would a more healthy person. I can be fairly calm and fatalistic about it.

After all, there’s nothing I can do about it. I will either wake up after surgery or I won’t. If I do, fantastic. I will likely feel a zillion times better. They say the effect is that immediate, which makes sense when it’s something as fundamental to your being as the ol’ fuel pump itself.

And if I don’t, well, at least this shitshow of a life will finally be over and I won’t be messing up the place with my odious existence any more.

Those who love me presumably don’t see it that way. And if it hurts you to read me talking this way, I am sorry.

All I can do is keep working on getting better. And venting my darkest thoughts in this space helps me a lot.

It’s like detoxification. The more dark stuff I put onto the page, the less there is circulating in the bloodstream of my mind.

Anyhow. Doctor Costin mentioned that because I might die, I should probably start thinking about whatever it is I feel the need to tell people before it’s too late.

Might even think about writing some “If you’re reading this, it’s because I am dead” type letters, just in case.

And he has a point. There are things I want to say to people, mostly my immediate family, and to die without getting to say these things would suck.

I already lost my chance with my dad Larry.

A lot of the other things I have to say to people, like for instance former teachers, are moot points because they are long dead.

Might do me good to write the letters anyhow, though.

I will think it all over.

I will be talking with my heart surgeon, Doctor Soong (sp?), on Monday, and presumably will learn when my surgery will be at that time.

I am guessing it will be pretty soon seeing as my angiogram results were pretty dire.

I hope the recovery isn’t too gross or painful or otherwise awful.

More after the break.

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I hate my stupid fucking whatever

Feeling pretty shitty right now.

Angry, restless, irritable, and so on. Yay, it’s this part of my goddamned cycle, where I get all cranky n’ shit.

Ho hum, so dumb, I’m numb, whatever.

Still doesn’t mean anything. Still doesn’t matter. Still doesn’t count.

Angry or sad or a little bit glad, I am still the same pile of excrement in a person shaped sack. Just a pointless mass of aimless intellect and wasted potential. The same magnificent machine with a broken engine and no fuel.

And I am so goddamned tired of it. I want something more. I NEED something more.

I wish I could just stop being me and go be someone else. Once again my fantasy of ghosting this life entirely rears its ugly and irresponsible head.

Just pack up what I can’t live without and head off in a random direction in search of a place I can make a new life. Some place where nobody knows me – in other words, any place that isn’t this apartment or Summerside.

Obscurity has its uses.

And once I find a place with a vibe I like – relaxed, groovy, pleasant, benevolent, and above all warm – I would start over. Hard reboot. Make up an entirely fictional past for myself. One where I am not such a waste of goddamned space.

One where I am a functional grownup. Or at least was.

One detail that has popped up in this fantasy is the idea of living somewhere obscure where the cost of living is low but still getting my current rate of disability cheque.

Could live pretty large for the same charge that way. Have a nice apartment. Get a cat or two. Maybe a big TV I can use as a monitor for my PC and play games on.

Pay someone to keep the place clean. Try to make myself part of the community. A fixture, a local character, someone everyone knows and likes.

Granted, the gay dating scene in a place like that might be mighty small, but fuck it, I only need one boyfriend.

And I rather like the idea of moving to a small town and making my place the one place where it’s okay to be gay.

The fringe benefits alone would be glorious. All those horny dudes who suddenly have a place where they can um…. express themselves.

(SFX : *poit poit*) Anywhere, where was I again?

Oh right, life stinks, I hate everything, fuck the world, rah rah rah, sis boom bah.

Jesus, even my rage bores me. Somewhere in the n-dimensional matrix of possible outcomes of which I am the center there must be a way for me to get to a better place in my life where I fit in and can function and be truly alive.

Of course, that assumes I don’t die on the operating table.

But then again, doesn’t everything?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Finally got that labwork done! Phew!

Here’s the timeline :

Wednesday the 16th of June, 2021 : I go see Doctor Caswell. She gives me the lab req for two lab tests, a fasting insulin and something called a C Peptide test.

I tell myself that I will get them done on the weekend.

Monday the 21st of June, 2021 : Woops, the weekend is over and I didn’t do it. Better go get it done today, right?

Ooops. no. Went there at 1 pm, was told that the wait was an hour and a half, car had to be back to Joe at 2 pm, so… no dice.

We will try again tomorrow.

Tuesday the 22nd of June, 2021 : Got there bright and early, ready for the wait. Waited in the hallway – in a chair, thank goodness.

No way I can stand for that long. I couldn’t when I was going to VFS and that was 5 years ago. I am way less healthy now.

I kinda miss those days. I did things back then.

Anyhow, while I am sit-waiting, I look at the lab req and am reminded that I was supposed to fast for these fucking things and I most definitely had not.

I wait anyway, and it’s crushingly boring. Once more, I could not achieve “hospital mode” where I just kind of veg out and doze in a Zen like state, so instead I just waited and was bored.

Could have brought a book, but it wouldn’t have helped. I was too agitated to read.

After an hour waiting, moving up one chair now and then (the hallway was lined with them), I get to the front, confirm with the interior receptionist that both tests required fasting, and admit defeat.

Luckily, the receptionist was nice enough to write a little note for me to give to the hallway receptionist so that I would not have to wait today.

Wednesday, the 23rd of June, 2021 (today) : Fasted for around ten hours. Not that I was given a specific duration, damn it.

I hate ambiguous instructions.

But it was ten hours last time I got a fasting insulin test, so I went with that.

And one nice thing about being able to test my blood whenever is that I was able to confirm that while I got super hungry and felt a bit weak, I was not, in fact, in a hypoglycemic state at any point during the fast.

Phew. Fasting sucked but at least I wasn’t risked my life for medical reasons.

That’s all kinds of fucked up.

“We’re worried about your health, so please go play footsie with death so we can get more information about you. ”

Anyhow. Was smooth sailing today. Skipped the line, went almost immediately into one of the little rooms, blood was drawn, everything is good.

Which finished my medical business for the moment. But now I have to call Doctor Caswell’s office back and talk to Ben and get another appointment.

Plus my eyes might not be healing properly. So next week I am going to call Doctor Vaezi’s office for an appointment. And talk to Doctor Chao about my left knee and the dangerous pains coming from it, sometimes randomly.

Falling apart sure keeps a fella busy.

More after the break,

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Don’t run away

Thinking I should get that printed out in huge letters and plaster my room with it. Or maybe get it tattooed on the inside of my eyelids.

The perils of being fleet of mind. Before one becomes addicted to running away. one must first have the capacity, and with a mind like mine, escape is always ever so easy.

It’s sticking around long enough to learn something that is the hard part.

I’ve talked here many times about the destructive nature of the urge to flee. How that panicky escape mode blinds you to the long term consequences of your actions and focuses your mind entirely on the very narrow goal of escape at all costs.

It’s a form of insanity in and of itself because it blocks access to rational self-interest and most other higher brain functions and partially takes control away from the reasoning mind and puts one in an altered state of consciousness.

That’s why people often have trouble relating to the things they do when panicking (or angry or hiding). They are not themselves in those moments. The person they are most of the time bugged out and left an idiot version of themselves in charge.

So they ask, “Why did I do that? It made no sense! How could I have done something so very very stupid?”.

Answer : well, look who you left in charge.

It’s like a situational lobotomy.

So what’s a scaredy cat (fox) like me to do? I want to stop being like this. I want to learn to hang in there and fight. Even get hurt.

Pain is a great teacher, after all.

But the rationality suppression aspect of panic makes it much trickier than it seems because the very part of my mind that would let me calm myself down and remember not to run away is the part that goes right out the window when I panic.

So I would have to somehow desensitize that panic button. Get that alarm system disarmed enough to let me stay calm under stress.

In other words, I would need to chill the fuck out.

Either that, or learn to function better when panicking. That’s a counterintuitive solution, to put it mildly, but it might actually work.

It would take making stupid me smarter, essentially. Not easy for someone used to doing everything via an application of overwhelming mental energy like myself.

It would involve dealing with thing like a normal person, essentially. Most people have to muddle through life via a blend of reason and instinct. Both get educated.

But not lucky fuckers like me, oh no. I’m a wizard, Harry. I have billions in brains and rarely ever sweat the brain strain.

As a result, my instincts are really fucking stupid.

I wish there was a pill I could take that would give me normal IQ for a couple hours.

Guess I’ll just have to take up drinkin’.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Oh yay, it’s time to do this one again.

I don’t want to but I don’t feel like I have a choice.

So here goes : oh no, I just realized that I have gone back to feeling like there is something I am supposed to be doing!

When we all know my life is completely without purpose or meaning!

Wow, what a relief. Surely I will never have to realize this again!

Seventh time’s the charm, am I right?

Once again, I am back at this same stupid crossroads where I “free” myself by telling myself that there is nothing I am supposed to be doing and therefore my life is entirely my own to use for my own enjoyment and I don’t need to flee this constant sense of failure by retreating into video games etc. etc. and so on.

After all, you can’t fail if nobody ever expected anything of you in the first place!

Honestly, I just want a more pleasant and satisfying life. One where I have a job that pays my bills so I am not a burden on people any more. One where I have meaningful things to do with my time instead of just burning down the days staying distracted but not engaged in life.

One where I have love, and the respect of my peers, and life outside the home. One where I am connected to a wider community. One where I can truly shine as I use my gifts to make things that make people happy.

One where there is some kind of point to my being alive.

One where I actually enjoy life instead of merely enduring it. One where I have lots of things to look forward to instead of seeing my future as a featureless grey cloud – and that’s the positive interpretation.

The negative one does not bear thinking on.

Let’s just say it involves tubes. And death.

One where life seems like a good thing to me, overall.

Yeah. That’s what I want.

And I know it is possible. I can feel the possibility within my soul, yearning and striving to get out from all the toxins and debris and live free and clear and clean at last.

But there’s a lot of shit I got to burn first. Fire cleanses all, after all.

Wait, I think I was… talking… about something, right?

I vaguely recall a…. topic….

Oh right. That old “supposed to be doing” trope.

What I am getting at is that there is clearly no point in telling myself that I will now be free of this sense of constant failure because it’s just going to come back again until I actually replace it with something better.

Mental health cannot be achieved via fiat.

Ya kinda gotta do the work, too.

And it serves its purpose as a kind of catch-all replacement for an actual sense of purpose and direction in my life.

I might not know what it is I am supposed to be doing, but I know there’s something, by gum, and that means my life isn’t as meaningless as it seems.

Meaningless. Pointless. Superfluous. Unnecessary. Unneeded. Unwanted. Unwelcome.

I think I better go lay down now.

More after the break.

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I remember Larry

Probably should have done this Sunday, which was Father’s Day, but whatever.

This was my first Father’s Day without a father. My father, the late Larry Donald Bertrand, died last year, and I miss him.

Even though he was a short-tempered prick of whom I was mostly afraid as a child and whose raging abuse attacks at the dinner table scarred my childhood and whose selfish and cowardly decision to take early retirement rather than stand up to his boss Ian absolutely wrecked my life by denying me the second half of my college education AND the only good friend group I’d ever had.

Despite all that, and a lot more, I miss him.

Because warts and all, he was my Dad. The only one I will ever have. He might not have been a very good one – I’d give him a C+ at most – he was still that man in my life and I miss him because I loved him despite himself.

Besides, loving and missing a parent is not about their qualifications. It’s not a judgment call. Saying you miss them and loved them doesn’t mean you are saying you approve of them, think they were good people, take back anything you ever said to them, or even that you forgive them for a single god damned thing.

All it means is that you recognize that, like it or not, this person is a big part of who you are right now, and now that they have passed on, that part of you has died as well, and the pain that brings is called grief, and the process of dealing with it is called mourning.

And I mourn my dear old Dad.

Plus, as he would quite eagerly tell you himself if he were still around, we could have done a lot worse. Yeah, I had a lousy childhood and my adult life has been a wreck because of him, but compared to his father, who was SATAN, he was Ward Cleaver.

He didn’t beat us, or molest us, or spend all the grocery money chasing women and getting drunk, or get in trouble with the law so frequently that they rarely lived in the same place two years in a row.

Plus I have read, as have we all, stories of OPP (Other People’s Parents) who are nightmare garbage people who make any of our parents look like saints.

So again, could have done worse.

And regardless of all that, he was still my Dad. I loved him and I miss him and I wish he was still around so I could watch the news with him and argue with him and listen to him tell stories of his youth.

He might not have been a great Dad, but he was my Dad, and I wish he was still here.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

What can I say, I love alliteration.

Today I tried to get some lab work done but was thwarted by Covid.

Can’t wait till THAT bullshit is over and done with.

I had planned on going to the LifeLabs near Lansdowne Mall (the one with Brooke Radiology on the main floor) to finally get around to the labwork that Doctor Craswell ordered for me last Wednesday.

Coulda shoulda done it on the weekend, but whatever.

So at 1 pm, Julian and I headed out. Got to the lab. Woops, they don’t do walk-ins any more. Or rather, they do, but there’s a 1.5 hour wait.

Well I didn’t have 1.5 hours to wait. The car had to be back to Joe for his commute before that. So no labwork for me.

Grrr. Luckily, I had a backup plan. I brought along the results of Friday’s angiogram in case I had time to drop them off at Doctor Ebtia’s office and save the apparently two week minimum it took a three page document to travel to Richmond.

When, again, you could have gotten in there faster via snail mail.

In fact, I am forced to wonder how exactly it does get there in the natural course of events. Because for the life of me, I cannot imagine a process that would actually take two god damned weeks.

Except walking it there, I suppose. But even then, ten days, tops.

So I must conclude that it spends most of that time just sitting there waiting for someone to put it just a little further down the line.

Which would be staggeringly inefficient even in the days of the paper office, but since the advent of the electronic computer it’s absolutely inexcusable.

Get this : during our initial conversation, Doctor Ebtia (cardiologist)’s secretary actually suggested I “take a picture of it and email it to her”.

So apparently they have heard of the internet, they just want other people to do the work surrounding it.

I don’t have a cellphone (gotta fix that), so I could not comply.

I resent being brought into this goddamned process at all.

And the thing is, I know the document started out as an electronic file. What doesn’t? So why couldn’t St. Paul’s just email the goddamned thing to Doctor Ebtia?

None of it makes sense.

Oh well, at least it gave me something to get irrationally angry and bent out of shape over, and those can be therapeutic.

Next up on my busy social calendar is an appointment with Doctor Craswell on Wednesday at 11:20 am, and in theory I have an appointment for an echocardiogram at St. Paul’s on Thursday.

I say “in theory” because I’m pretentious. But also because I looked at my notes and found that the procedure is schedules for 5:30 pm.

Um, nerp. Not healthy enough to get there via transit and there is no way I can get a ride from Julian that late in the day.

I will discuss alternatives with J&J tonight, but if a plan cannot be conceived, I will have to call up St. Paul’s and reschedule.

Which is not that big a deal.

But I am worried that the medical system is started to view me as a flake.

More after the brake. I mean, break.

---

Into the heart of darkness

Yup. More “Wound” talk. Sorry.

I can see it clearly my head, though it is hard to describe. Like an evil-looking outline of a person, and where the heart would be there is instead the outline of a heart glowing with a terrible heat in a malevolent shade of orange/red.

And this heat pulsates and throbs in the air like hate itself, and the eyes glower with resentment and loathing, and as the waves of vibration and radiation push my mind into the hell of eternal heatstroke and drain all life and vitality from every cell of my body, I know that only death can end my pain.

And I ain’t done yet. I don’t want to go. I like it here. I can still have fun.

And I am still an extraordinary being, with incredible powers. Talents and abilities beyond most people’s ability to grasp, a depth and beauty of spirit that gives me extraordinary insight into the human soul, the vision of a messiah and the pragmatism of a miracle worker, and one heck of a nice guy too.

I really just want to make people happy. Nothing could please me more.

So that dark cancer at the core of my soul is not the real me. I need to know that. To take it deep inside where it can burn the poison from my veins and melt the ice cube on my heart and flush the toxins from my veins and make me pure again.

I am not my illness. I am that which became ill, and can become well.

I am not my issues. I am that which has the issues, and can deal with them.

I am not my weakness. I am he who became weak, and will be strong again.

The real me is a strong, powerful, confident, daring, courageous, beautiful, bold, incredible, and thoroughly amazing wizard.

One of these day, I will emerge from my cave and shine upon the world. And my light will be all the brighter for having been banked so deep for so long.

But there’s no hurry. Waiting is fullness. Healing will happen at its own rate and attempts to constrain and capture it with funny little symbols of quantitative reasoning are as laughably misguided as trying to scientifically determine the color of love.

The answer may surprise you.

I will do what I can to stay alive and free of pain. I won’t get it all right all the time. I’m still a very ill man on all levels, so I can only do what the illnesses allow.

But I am going to fight. No defeat, no surrender. I’m the Juggernaut, bitch, and nothing is going to stop me.

I may not win.

I may lose horrible.

I might die a senseless and premature death.

But I will never, ever give up.

Live forever or die trying, right?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Feeling better today. Dunno why.

Doesn’t matter, either. My crazy brain will insist upon trying to “figure out” what is making me feel relatively sunshiny right now so I can learn the important underlying principles and thereafter be able to produce the same result at will, and in whatever color or flavour I want.

Of course, that’s futile, as one of the things that produce a happier frame of mind for me is adopting a more relaxed, chill attitude where I don’t obsess over trying to figure out the how and why of every damned thing.

I repeat to myself : You don’t have to “know” how everything works to be safe.

Plenty of people lead safe, happy, satisfying lives knowing and understanding far far less about the world than I do.

It’s only my rampant and unchecked neurosis that makes me compulsively try to intellectually devour and digest everything in my path in a nobly absurd attempt to conquer the world with the power of my mind.

Well buckle up, buttercup, because that ain’t gonna work. Nobody is smart enough for THAT. Sooner or later you have to “guess”, i.e. go outside what can be “known” and enter the world where you’re going to have to go with your gut.

Use your enteric brain, damn it!

---

As Around So Within

I think I have stumbled upon a potentially very important metaphor.

I realized that what happens in this pigsty of a room of mine – the fact that I never throw stuff out so it just piles up everywhere displacing and disfiguring my living area – also happens in this head of mine.

Both spaces are in dire need of a savage cleaning, and in both cases it’s because I never deal with my problems if I can just ignore them instead.

Because it’s easier. And doesn’t take me away from my precious fucking video games.

Always got to throw that in so I remember what the real problems are instead of the various pieces of plausible bullshit I routinely circulate.

But it’s more than that, because underneath and behind it all is that goddamned Wound. When I try to build a motivational chain that will lead to positive action, that fucking thing always kicks in and pulls the plug on the whole thing, so instead of action I get sadness.

Once more I invoke the image of me sitting facing a wall, and when someone or something wants me to turn to face the world, I just turn my head and say “No. ”

No. I can’t. I’m broken. The simplest of things hurt me so much inside. And with that pain comes fear, as it always does.

Fear is a warning meant to prevent pain.

And I try so hard to pull myself together and face my problems and thereby solve them, but that Wound keeps holding me back. Making me sad, making me weak, making me unable to take care of myself at all.

And it’s not like anyone else wants the job.

So I guess I will just die alone.

More after the break.

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Way too easy

In a moment, something about my tragic childhood.

But first, this :

Yes, I posted that video just for the dumb joke in the caption.

And I am fine with that. Anyhow.

My real topic is something that occurred to me while pissing just now. It’s not a radical new angle on my problems, but more like a refinement of existing tropes.

Basically, I realized that for my entire scholastic career, I took my advanced abilities for granted to such a degree that whenever I encountered something I actually found difficult or challenging, I just gave up immediately.

After all, there were still tons of other things I was naturally good at and that were therefore super easy for me, so why stick with anything hard?

This idea came to me as I was peeing and remembering my brief history as a computer programming student. Back in 1990, I took UPEI’s one computer science program, which was one course over two semesters.

And I absolutely breezed through the fall semester part of the course. Piece of cake. It was pretty much just an extension of language skills. Nolo problemo.

But then, about a month into the spring semester, I hit a brick wall.

A brick wall called “stacks and pointers”.

You don’t need to know what they are, just that they marked the point where things got too abstract for me. I could no longer imagine what was going on in the program. I had to learn to trust in the process I had written and my ability to manipulate that process and get useful results.

Um, nope. Brain crashed. Please reboot.

So I gave up. Decided computer programming was not for me. Did not even finish the god damned course.

After all, there were still lots of other things I was naturally good at!

But I totally could have learned that stuff. It’s well within my capacities.

I just would had to actually, ya know. try harder.

And I had never ever ever had to do that. The core academic subjects like math, English, math, science, and history were all super easy for me, so who cared about the stuff I couldn’t do like arts and crafts or gym?

I’d just refuse to do them, and get away with it because nobody was going to fail the academic genius because he didn’t pass shop.

To my credit, I did try at things I knew I would find super hard. That probably helped too. People have way more sympathy for the person bravely trying and failing than they do people who give up and act like they are too good to bother.

Anyhow, I gave up on computer programming not because it was too hard, but because it was not absurdly easy for me.

And I hate that. What a fucking idiot I was, with that slap happy go lucky fucking attitude that never thought about the future and to which the concept “try harder because you want this thing” would never occur.

So can I change that about myself now? I don’t know. It would take finally toughening up after all of these decades spent staying squishy soft and sensitive.

And that feels just a little bit like dying to me.

Well, they say that in order to be truly free, you have to give up a little part of yourself.

Maybe that’s mine.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.