Never. Not even once. Even while hanging out with my best friends in college. Evem while hanging out with my best friends today.

Hell, even while opening presents with my family on Christmas Day. Even then, I didn’t feel like I belonged there. Even then, I felt like there was The Parents, The Siblings, and me, the accident, the unwanted guest who can’t leave, the burden, the afterthought.

Even at my happiest and most relaxed, the deep down true core of my being is locked away in a freezer vault with his head tucked into the corner to shut out the world outside his skull that has been so cruel to him.

Now exactly how much of that is other people’s fault and how much of it is the result of my emotional damage is unclear, and likely to stay that way.

It’s impossible to determine.

I do know that there’s been a really thick glass wall between me and others ever since I was raped. Thick, because I had to retreat pretty far into my mind to escape the trauma.

And glass because it was and still largely is invisible to me and to others. I act remarkably like someone who is whole and intact and emotionally present. I’m friendly and affable and funny and sweet. I don’t visibly push people away, I am not prickly or rude, and I am almost always polite, pleasant, and accommodating.

But it’s all a scam. I’m not really here. I’m a hologram. A facsimile. A shadow of a shadow. An illusion so cunning it even fools me most of the time.

Like a diver in a wetsuit, I can swim as close to all those pretty colorful fishes that I want so badly to be with… but I can never touch them.

That which protects me also seals me away from everything I want.

The ocean of numbness I swim in keeps everything far, far away.

No wonder I never feel like I belong. Tender feelings like that are no match for my savage arctic defenses.

How can I feel like I belong when I’m not even really here?

The real me is locked away in that freezer vault like the Wizard of Oz behind his curtain, running the whole show from an undisclosed location at the bottom of the sea.

And I don’t know how to be any other way.

Maybe I should stop fighting it and give in to the urge to becoming a mocking, sarcastic, derisive and dismissive asshole.

Might make for a refreshing change. A moral vacation, if you will.

There has to be some way to build a connection to my id. To learn to accept my passions and my instincts without making them conform to some rationalist review panel that vetoes practically everything natural or wholesome or good.

Why can’t I just live in a relaxed and natural way? Why can’t I just be myself? Why can’t I just let life flow through me?

There has ro be some way out of the freezer vault.

And I will keep searching till I find it.

It’s not like I have anything better to do.

More after the break.

---

Knot in a sack

(WARNING : Poop talk.)

Right now, feels like someone tied a knot in my gut.

Which means I am constipated.

No mystery as to why : because I kept delaying gratification. defecation. ^[1]

For no good reason, I assure you. Because I didn’t feel like stopping my game of Fallout 76. Or I was too sleepy to bother. Or I was about to eat and a deposit of any substantial amount tend to send things sloshing to and fro down there and that kills my appetite.

Little dumb things like that.

And the thing is, when I keep putting it off, the contractions still continue but because there is no outlet, the contents of the trash compactor on the detention level get compresse instead, forming a dense ball (or to use the medical term, a “bolus”) in my guts and that then gums up the works.

It’s like I swallowed a baseball whole. Like a snake.

And so now there is nothing I can do but hydrate thoroughly in order to keep everything soft and wait for things to work themselves out.

It’s up to the fates at that point. Might be easy, might be rough, might be so bad it feels like I am giving birth to a red hot boulder.

Luckily that one is rare and usually follows doing way more very inadvisable things than merely skipping potty time.

Thank you for reading this section. Writing it had been oddly cathartic.

---

Today’s been quiet.

Not a lot going on chez moi on a Saturday. I’ve slept, I’ve eaten, I’ve blogged, I have (of course) played a lot of Fallout 76.

Well, it was that or do something with my life.

And I have slept. Feeling sleepy now, in fact. I think that, no matter how much sleep i have had during the day, once it gets dark my melotonin levels swing and I get sleepy and lazy and want to curl up and hibernate.

Wake me when it’s time for my heart procedure.

Or don’t. I would prefer to be able to sleep through it this time, but I somehow doubt I will be so lucky.

Dunno why I had to be awake for the angiogram. It’s not like when I had a gastroscopy and I had to be awake so I could sit upright and thus keep the path through my digestive tract as much of a straight line as possible.

The same could be true of my heart arteries (hearteries?) but during the angiogram I was flat on my back.

Whatever. I am sure they have a good reason for it. Maybe I need to be awake so I will go “ow!” if they get something wrong.

Hopefully it won’t come to that.

I suppose that there’s some degree of risk with all invasive procedures. But I am pretty sure the risk involved in continuing on with a bum ticker is much worse.

Oh. And I managed to order Pizza Hut tonight, but only because they still take cash.

And I am pathetically grateful for their pity.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

wp:paragraph –>

This just in

They got sausage rolls at 7-11.

And not just any sausage rolls. HUGE freaking sausage rolls. Sausage rolls the size and shape of the big soft sided pen and pencil cases we used as kids. Sausage rolls you could hide a good sized dagger in.

I’m telling you, you never sausage a thing! ^[1]

They’re pretty tasty, too. However, they are basically a big log of carbs and cholesterol and so I will try not to have them too often as they would not be good for my diabetes or my heart condition.

Speaking of which….

I have a date

For only time can mend my sad and broken heart…..

Um, literally. Because my heart is literally broken and I now have a date for when it will finally be fixed.

That date is Nov 16, at St. Paul’s of course. I will be checking in at 7 am (yikes) and will be there six to eight hours or more as they will be putting in stents and that takes more time for prep and recovery than when they were just looking around.

Whatever. At one point I was bracing myself for open heart surgery, with them cracking my sternum and everything, so this seems pretty mild by comparison.

Reminder : stents are little spreaders that open up occluded arteries and thus restore normal blood flow.

They should work right away, and so hopefully I will feel a heck of a lot better as soon as I recover from the procedure.

W00t to that! I am so looking forward to having this problem finally get fixed!

Who knows, once the procedure has been judged a success, maybe I will finally be able to start exercising to banish both my blues and my high blood sugar!

Wound Care : Endgame

I am almost done with my trips to Wound Care.

The major wound on my right leg has closed up and thus is no longer a wound. The flesh there is rather raw and painful to the touch almost like a burn, so I am probably going to keep covering it up for a little while.

It’s even starting to peel like a burn. So yeah, gonna cover that up before it starts to seriously itch and thus send me down a dark path.

That leaves just that giant motherfucking callous on my foot. When I went in for Wound Care today, there was a Wound Care specialist there and she said she would take a closer look at my callous on my next visit and do some more debriding as well as have some recommendations as to where I can go to get some modifications to my shoe to make the weight distribute more evenly.

I am sure that will help in the long run.

It might even help me walk without pain, which would be a freakin’ miracle.

I would gladly walk for exercise if it didn’t fucking hurt.

More after the break.

---

It just gets worse

So now DoorDash won’t take my credit card any more.

Son of a particularly feculent bitch. There goes one of my little pleasures. No more Otaru Sushi or Pokey Okey for me until I get a new card.

It’s either that or look to see if anyone will let me pay for my order in cash any more. Cash, I got, in spades.

It’s the internet kind of money I lack.

Ya know, a case could be made that internet spendable cash is rapidly becoming a necessity in the modern era, like smartphones and WiFi.

So to deny it to me is a form of discriminatory deprivation.

(And I just had a cola burp so intense that it felt like my nose would burst into flames. Not strictly related but it feels like part of the overall pattern.)

I am Googling around and so far, I am not seeing another reloadable VISA option here in Canada. Ain’t that fun.

Money Mart doesn’t even offer them any more. Sigh.

I still don’t get why it’s a big deal to just let me spend money I have already given to you via a VISA card.

I think I am going to give the folks at Vancity one last chance. I am going to go in there to drain whatever is left on my now worthless reloadable VISA (and they better not try to dick me around on THAT) and if that goes well, I am going to put on my best bright and shiny and reasonable manner ^[1]and talk with one of their financial people (not a teller) and see if there is some way I can get what I want (to be able to spend money online) via some financial instrument of theirs.

Like Visa Debit. Or hell, PayPal.

If not, I don’t know what I am going to do. Being stuck in cash hell seems like a peculiarly modern fate for someone like me.

This image keeps popping into my head is of me looking bedraggled and forlorn standing on a street corner with a fistful of cash in my hand begging people to accept it in exchange for even just an apple, and people coldly ignoring me or rudely telling me to “get a credit card!” or “where’s your smartphone?”.

I mean, I am not totally screwed. Restaurants still take cash if you are there in person, at least, and the same goes for supermarkets.

And in the gran scheme of things, not being able to order in is hardly torture.

And for some things, I can just buy gift cards. For example, if I want to buy something off of Steam, there are cards for that.

Heck, there’s Visa gift cards. I might end up having to just buy those on a regular basis. That would suck to the extreme but at least it would freaking work.

Oh, and just to complete the aggravation marathon, a game I’ve wanted to try for a while called Stellaris went on crazy good sale (only $11!) today, so I bought and downloaded it and gave it a try.

It’s a big and detailed and complex space empire type game. Quite intimidating, but there is what they call a Full Tutorial.

Good. Said tutorial says the first thing I need to do is survey another star system.

And then totally abandons me. No clue as to how I do that. None. Presumably it’s in the dozens of nested menus SOMEWHERE but I am not interested in having to mindlessly explore the interface just to play the fucking game.

Why are so many games like this? Why do so few games grasp the basic concept of a tutorial? You explain how to do things! That’s it! Without skipping steps!

Imagine if these people taught Driver’s Ed!

First, you get in the car. Then, you put the key in the ignition thing, which is located somewhere. You then put the car into drive, and go forward while turning the wheel sometimes. You then drive to Butte, Montana. Congratulations, you now know how to drive! Tutorial over.

That could be funnier but I am too tired and pissed off to work on it more.

I am going to give the game another shot because it’s possible that I accidentally exited the tutorial at some point.

But if not, I am hard returning the stupid fucking thing.

Nothing fucking works!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

This ain’t gonna be easy.

But I just got off the phone with Doctor Costin and one of the things that came up during the session was the idea of my making a list of things that make me feel better.

Not as some kind of toxic obligating to-do list. That would only make things worse.

No, more like a way to cut through some of the noisy bullshit in my head and carve a clear path between me as I am and a belief that I can feel better.

That how I feel now is not how I will feel forever, and that light and love and wholesome loving living is at least possible for me.

It’s worth a shot.

So let’s begin.

Getting something meaningful accomplished.  

That’s a big one. On a deep level that is a big part of why I blog like this every day. There is the therapeutic catharsis I get from it and there is the need to do something that exists past the moment and has some meaning to me, however small.

I could do a lot more, of course. But that involves risk. The nice thing about this blog is that I can write on it and post to it and there are no gatekeepers to convince and no hurdles to overcome, just me and my thoughts.

Still, I could probably aim a little higher. Somehow.

Having something to look forward to

Another big one. Makes a huge difference to my mood if I have something good to look forward to in the future.

Which is not easy for me to come by. Right now, the future kinda sucks, both in general and for me personally.

The world is burning and I am dying. Not fun.

And so I tend to avoid thinking about the future at all. That is not new – depression makes it hard to even believe in the future, let alone that it might be better.

But global warming and local dying have really emphasizing the wisdom of not thinking about the future very much.

There has to be a way of manufacturing my own hope, though. Of making plans to do something I will enjoy so I have something to look forward to.

For example, I am thinking about going to see the new Dune movie. Reviews are spectacular, I love the book, and it’s definitely the sort of thing one should see on the biggest screen around.

And I can afford it. Even if I have to take a cab there and back. I have somehow accumulated quite the financial surplus and there must be some way to use that to make me happy dammit.

Which brings us to….

Cold hard cash

Money also makes me feel better.

Not so much the spending it as the having it.

It’s hoarding, pure and simple. Having money makes me feel more secure independent of any actual use for the money.

In fact, actually spending it tends to make me depressed. Like I suffered a personal loss. Like I have failed in some deep way.

Which is insane, obviously. What’s the point of having it if not to spend it?

But somehow I never get around to it….

More after the break.

---

This week on Hoarders…Smaug.

---

Positive human interaction (PHI)

Rather a broad category, I know, but it fits.

By this I mean any kind of warm interpersonal dealings that make me feel warm and good inside and leave me feeling okay.

This doesn’t happen much in the real world.

But I do have Sunday dinner at Denny’s with my friends Joe, Julian, and Felicity. And that is golden. It’s the highlight of my week and it does me a lot of good.

Other than that…. well, ironically, the most positive human interaction I get is while pretending to be a fox on the internet.

Some of us can only truly be ourselves while wearing a mask.

It’s hard for PHI to find me, let alone get to me. My Avoidant Personality Disorder makes me hardcore hide from the world. I interact with other people very very little in real life.

Odds are strongly in favour of anyone I actually interact with being a medical professional. A doctor, a nurse, a receptionist. my therapist, and so on.

And while I love my friends and the time I spend with them…. the truth is we are not that close. Or at least, close only up to a point.

Possibly as close as I can let anybody get.

And that leaves me very cold and alone inside.

Let’s move on.

High quality entertainment

In other words, good video games.

Good TV too. My video game addiction hasn’t completely devoured yet. There’s the Daily Show and Colbert on the regular, plus new shows like Owl House, Rick and Morty, Corner Gas Animated. Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, and so on.

But I spend the majority of my waking hours playing video games.

And that is both tragic and sad. And self-destructive. It eats up whatever free time and energy and drive I have that might go to making my life more pleasing to me and so I just keep going day by day, slowly dying while I keep on playing, getting nowhere.

It’s only gotten worse over time. I used to also have somewhat of a social life. I organized furmeets, dinner meets, I ran the local Freecycle.

But then Skyrim happened and ripped everything else away from me.

I know I am not going to get much of anywhere until I break the addiction. Learn to step away from the ready, easy pleasure of gaming to spend at least the occasional hour pursuing some kind of long term improvement in my life.

But I am so pathetically dependent on the sanctuary it gives and I can’t imagine having to deal with life without it.

And it’s so much easier to keep letting the days go by.

Not better. Just easier.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Well I called the pharmacy. Turns out my main man Simon is away, will be back tomorrow, so I will have to call back then.

I guess the super young sounding dude (seriously, he sounds ten) that replaces him when he’s away did not want to deal with my needing a new box of Dexcom G6 sensors one week after the previous box.

A box that SHOULD have lasted 30 days. Sigh.

Nothing’s ever simple, nothing’s ever easy, and nothing ever just fucking WORKS.

At least I am not as sleepy today as I was yesterday. Don’t get me wrong, I am still pretty sleepy, but nowhere near as somnolent as I was 24 hours ago.

Now, I at least have a saving throw versus sleep.

And it’s not the pervasive and saturating tiredness from before. I can feel a steady tug downwards beckoning me to lay down and surrender anon, but it’s not too hard to ignore it and delay my downtime.

Still, when I finish writing,. I am going to have to go down. No real choice.

And I hate that. I don’t like having no choice in the matter. I prefer to choose when I leep and when I stay up.

Then again, at least I am learning to wise up and listen to my body and do what it wants me to do.

It’s only taken the 40 years since I learned that in the Seventies for that to sink in.

Turns out I am only a lightning faster learner in certain areas.

---

Feeling frustrated and restless and sick of my life today.

Because it’s a stupid fucking life. All I do is play video games and blog. I don’t do a single thing that might get me somewhere in life and that’s a huge deal because I am not a happy man.

Comfortable, maybe. But not content.

God damn it. Gotta go down.

I will be back soon.

This shit is getting old fast.

---

Maaaybe I spoke too soon on that “not as sleepy” thing.

Well, no. I definitely feel less sleepy than yesterday. It just seems to amount to my needing to sleep all the goddamned time anyway.

Napped after finishing previous section. Woke up, felt pretty alert and ready to at the very least finish my first 500. But then I realized I needed to poop.

Did so. Now I feel like I am going to pass out and faceplant into the keyboard and all I want to do is crawl back into bed AGAIN.

I might be fighting off an infection. My throat is sore sometimes and I get a scratchy feeling in the center of my chest sometimes too.

Regardless of cause, it’s irritating. Like always, I wish I could be all Zen about it and just go with the flow but I am too feisty by nature and I want to live my damned life.

Such as it is. Hey, it might not be much, but it’s mine.

But no. Now I have to go back bed for yet MORE goddamned sleep.

More after the break.

---

I give my pain to the night

Thrust my shattered heart into the void
Cleanse my filthy soul in the fires of creation
Bleed my blackest blood into the gaping maw of an open grave
Feed my festering flesh to the hounds of hell
And piss my poisons into the immortal river of life
Hoping that these obscene ablutions
Can finally free me to be
Not the toad I’ve been
But the prince I was meant to be

---

Ya know. I’m a pretty good poet. I should write stuff like the above more often.

It might not exactly have commercial appeal, but it helps me cope, and that’s more than enough reason to do it.

Some art is for the artist alone.

---

Still pretty fucking sleepy despite like four more hours of sleep.

And it’s so very boring.

And irritating. I think what bugs me the most during these sleepy periods is that they make it harder to think, and historically, I get pretty testy when my cognition is impaired.

That’s how little faith I have in the benevolence or even neutrality of the cosmos. Deep down, my core programming insists that only by being hyper alert and ready to apply absolutely all of my massive mental might to handling reality at a heartbeat’s notice, I am in terrible danger and something truly awful is going to happen any second.

Man, that’s a lot of neurosis to be carrying around as just the background to my actual conscious operating mind.

I suppose that’s what happens when your innocence is shattered by a stranger’s cock when you are only four years old.

All your trust in the safety of the world is gone and you have to develop some other way to cope with life when you are still too young to ride the Ferris Wheel.

Innocence has a purpose. A very important one. It keeps us from learning things we can’t yet handle and nurtures the soul through the painful process of maturing.

It’s like it guides the child through the proper stages of mental growth and makes sure they happen in the right order to ensure they become a psychologically and spiritually healthy adult one day.

Mine got fucked pretty much right away.

Maybe that’s why my growth was so utterly unbalanced. So much mental, so very little spiritual. Powers of the mind that bury the needle but so little in the way of emotional growth that at times I feel like a helpless infant.

One left to cry until his tears ran dry, and who is still, on some level, waiting for someone to notice his distress and come fix everything for him.

The fact that adult me knows there is zero chance of that ever happening does not give baby me the power to grow up without it.

I still need all that emotional nutrition I missed. It’s not optional. Strong psyches, like strong bodies, aren’t just wished into existence.

They are made from what you get from your environment.

You are what you eat, after all.

And I have been starving my whole life.

And some time soon, if I am not careful, I will finally die from it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Still haven’t made that fucking phone call.

Really wanted to have gotten it done by now, but fate (with a possible assist by subconscious self sabotage) stepped in and I am have a whopper of a sleepy day.

In that I have spent most of today asleep, barely managing to stay awake long enough to eat before returning to the dark waters from which I arose like Godzilla at the end of the movie and going the fuck back to sleep.

Not because I want to.

Because I have to. Sigh.

I might make it to the phone call anyhow. I assume the hotline is 24/7 and it’s only 3:45 pm so I have plenty of hours left in the day to do it.

And now that I am eating and imbibing precious, life-giving Diet Coke, I am feeling somewhat closer to sentience than I have all day.

So there’s hope for me yet.

But right now I still feel very mentally fried. And crispy on both sides. It’s hard to stay focused on the screen and I am as dizzy and disoriented as usual. My sinuses are full so I have a head full of a fun goo that sloshes around when I move my head, and I have a very slight tremor going on throughout my entire body.

And when I move, it kind of feels like I am underwater. Like I can almost feel the water flowing over my skin and resisting my motion.

And I can’t even swim.

So today’s been a matter of doggedly swimming against the tide.

Even just getting my pills together to take with lunch feels like I am trying to solve the puzzle box from the Hellraiser movies.

---

I still feel a strong resistance to making that stupid call to the Dexcom hotline.

And I keep asking myself, “Whyyyyyyyyy??”. What’s the big frigging deal? What do I think is going to happen? What turned this into such an object of dread? \

All I have to do is call up and explain what happened. Then listen to what they say. I am hoping it’s a known problem and they just send me a new box of sensors.

And hopefully, THOSE will work. If not, I will have to assume it’s the transmitter and get a new goddamned one of THOSE.

Damn I miss the previous system, the OneTouch Libre.

Not gonna make it to 500. I will be back soon.

---

I live again.

Hopefully I am through the worst of it. I feel marginally better than I did earlier.

A bit more alert, a bit more awake, a bit more alive.

A bit more horny, for some reason. Guess I am waking up all over.

Increasingly of the opinion that if I am going to get my life moving so I can finish growing up already, something in me has to die.

Something deep and vital and very, very broken.

And I am fine with that. Like I have said many times before, there is nothing in me that is more important than my happiness.

I will burn my very soul to cinders and ash if that is what it takes to be free.

I will drown myself in my own icy cold waters if that’s what it takes to be free.

I will bury myself alive and suffocate if that’s what it takes to be free.

I will even do scary things I don’t want to do that will hurt and that involve confronting my deepest fears if that is what it takes to be free.

Anything to finally escape these deadly doldrums and reach the open sea.

More after the break,.

---

Just chillin’ and being a genius

You know, it’s kind of amazing that I know as much music as I do.

Like, I have 30.1 gigs of mp3’s in 5,096 files and I am pretty I could recognize 90 percent of them within 3-5 seconds and sing along with some or most of the lyrics of probably 75-80 percent of them.

That’s a hell of a lot of music.

And that’s nowhere near the entirely of my musical knowledge. It’s just the ones I have acquired as MP3. I quite frequently come across songs I know and like and remember and I then grab them off YouTube and add them to the collection.

And I don’t see this ever ending. I have been collecting MP3’s for 25 years or so, so if there was an end point, I would have reached it years ago.

I can only conclude that somewhere in the vast rat’s library of my mind is pretty much every piece of music I have ever heard just waiting to be triggered via re-exposure.

And that’s not even counting the brand new music I will like.

And it’s not like I ever thought having such a vast internal musical database was normal. exactly. Heck, there’s people out there who can listen to the same song dozens of times in a row.

What a horrifying thought.

But it’s only now that I am realizing that it takes a real genius to have my kind of musical consciousness. What’s more than that is that it’s an entirely different kind of genius that the stuff I tend to identify with, like my deep insights and my strings of rapid fire deductions and my awe inspiring humility.

Oh, and verbal skills. I got them. They’re godlike.

So the evidence just keeps piling up that I am one amazing dude. I have a whole bouquet of extraordinary abilities, any one of which many people would donate favored appendages to acquire. \

So I got that going for me.

Now if only I wasn’t so scared of everything all the time. If only all that fear didn’t trap me in this meaningless life of filth and futility. If only all this power and ability was accompanied by the strength, courage, willpower, and vitality to use it/

There must be someone out there who would recognize my extraordinary abilities and be willing to give me the sort of support, shelter, and security I need if I am going to truly get out there and shine.

A lover? An agent? Both? I dunno.

But I can’t do this by myself.

And I o not know how to get help.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Still haven’t made that fucking phone call.

Really wanted to have gotten it done by now, but fate (with a possible assist by subconscious self sabotage) stepped in and I am have a whopper of a sleepy day.

In that I have spent most of today asleep, barely managing to stay awake long enough to eat before returning to the dark waters from which I arose like Godzilla at the end of the movie and going the fuck back to sleep.

Not because I want to.

Because I have to. Sigh.

I might make it to the phone call anyhow. I assume the hotline is 24/7 and it’s only 3:45 pm so I have plenty of hours left in the day to do it.

And now that I am eating and imbibing precious, life-giving Diet Coke, I am feeling somewhat closer to sentience than I have all day.

So there’s hope for me yet.

But right now I still feel very mentally fried. And crispy on both sides. It’s hard to stay focused on the screen and I am as dizzy and disoriented as usual. My sinuses are full so I have a head full of a fun goo that sloshes around when I move my head, and I have a very slight tremor going on throughout my entire body.

And when I move, it kind of feels like I am underwater. Like I can almost feel the water flowing over my skin and resisting my motion.

And I can’t even swim.

So today’s been a matter of doggedly swimming against the tide.

Even just getting my pills together to take with lunch feels like I am trying to solve the puzzle box from the Hellraiser movies.

---

I still feel a strong resistance to making that stupid call to the Dexcom hotline.

And I keep asking myself, “Whyyyyyyyyy??”. What’s the big frigging deal? What do I think is going to happen? What turned this into such an object of dread? \

All I have to do is call up and explain what happened. Then listen to what they say. I am hoping it’s a known problem and they just send me a new box of sensors.

And hopefully, THOSE will work. If not, I will have to assume it’s the transmitter and get a new goddamned one of THOSE.

Damn I miss the previous system, the OneTouch Libre.

Not gonna make it to 500. I will be back soon.

---

I live again.

Hopefully I am through the worst of it. I feel marginally better than I did earlier.

A bit more alert, a bit more awake, a bit more alive.

A bit more horny, for some reason. Guess I am waking up all over.

Increasingly of the opinion that if I am going to get my life moving so I can finish growing up already, something in me has to die.

Something deep and vital and very, very broken.

And I am fine with that. Like I have said many times before, there is nothing in me that is more important than my happiness.

I will burn my very soul to cinders and ash if that is what it takes to be free.

I will drown myself in my own icy cold waters if that’s what it takes to be free.

I will bury myself alive and suffocate if that’s what it takes to be free.

I will even do scary things I don’t want to do that will hurt and that involve confronting my deepest fears if that is what it takes to be free.

Anything to finally escape these deadly doldrums and reach the open sea.

More after the break,.

---

 888-738-3646.

That is the number for tech support for my Dexcom G6 finger poke free continuous glucometer system. It’s the number I need to call in order to tell them about the three sensors in a row that failed the exact same way at the exact same point in the two hour “warming up” part of starting a new sensor.

It’s the step I need to take in order to get back on track with my diabetes control. I had finally gotten it down into the healthy range when the previous sensor shut down and I am eager to get it under control again.

And it’s just a simple phone call, right? Just a few minutes talking to a total stranger and admitting to having a problem which might turn out to be all my own stupid fault

The sensors failed on Wednesday and it’s now Monday and I know I have to do it soon because I can feel the will to do so slipping away and it would be ever so easy to just let go and give in and let myself “forget” to do it and the next thing you know it’s six months or a year of no glucose control later and I have gotten much sicker and I am disingenuously claiming to have just “forgot”.

Which I did. Technically. But I could have held on to it harder instead of just deciding not to deal with it because it’s too hard and let it go slip sliding away into the depths of my mind to rest there with all the other things I should be doing, but don’t.

So with all that is at stake, it should be easy to just do it, right? It’s a no-brainer.

But no. It is hard to make myself do something when I have been “not doing it” for a little while. One of my all too easily invoked aversions has formed and the longer it remains, the harder it gets to overcome.

I need to do it. I want to do it. I have every reason to do it.

But I can’t make myself do it.

Or at least I haven’t yet.

I might have to work around it instead. Call the pharmacy and see if I can get a new box of sensors in the hope that the previous box of them failed because it was a bad batch.

Either way, I have to make a phone call.

But at least my pharmacist isn’t a total stranger who might have a very stressful to me accent that makes it hard to understand them.

Either way, I will get it done soon. Writing about it has helped me work through the emotions and I feel better about the whole thing now.

Maybe the key to overcoming these random aversions is talking them out. Pop the mental cramp by working the subject despite the pain and resistance.

Honestly, all paths out of my darkness involve a hell of a lot of pain.

But fuck it. I was born to suffer.

Might as well make that work in my favour for a change,.

More after the block.

---

Haven’t done it yet. Tomorrow for sure, no excuses, gotta get it done.

---

What the hell, more porn

And a few other bits n’ pieces, probably.

But first, a sexy bunny from out pal Chunie.

Or possibly a jackalope? Point is, hawt.

My god Chunie is amazing. Such extraordinary technical skill put to such horny use.

I feel both humbled and grateful. Truly, he is a blessing unto us all.

Amen and pass the Jergens.

---

Then there’s this happy couple :

I choose to believe that these two just finished a damn good buttfuck and are cuddling and nuzzling as they bask in the warmth of the afterglow.

This is what love looks like to me. Cuddles, and buttsex.

It’s the best of both worlds.

---

LOL. When the SPF^[1] of commercially available sunblocks started going up way back in the days of the ozone layer crisis, I found myself pondering the theoretical limits.

Like, what’s the SPF of a coat of paint? Or a brick wall? How goes skin color factor in? Does a pasty white dude like me need a higher SPF than James Earl Jones when he’s not playing the recently unmasked Darth Vader? And what about cats? What is the SPF of cat fur?

There has to be some upper limit past which literally no sunlight or UV can pass.

And it probably is made by Sherman Williams and comes in a wide variety of shades to match your personal style both inside and outdoors.

---

I would REALLY love to make something like this.

Sadly, the idea has been done to death and is quite ancient by now.

But I don’t care. It seems like such a great way to create a ton of genuine content with just a bunch of friends and a camera and your own wacky imagination.

So some day, I swear, I will make something like this. And it will be hilarious and epic and full of insanely quotable non sequiturs and be treasured forever.

By me, at least.

---

Look at this sexy doggo.

I really want to give him a good scritching between the ears.

Among other things. Rawr.

I’d probably end up wanting to take that collar off him eventually, if he will let me.

I just don’t like seeing someone tied up or restricted. Makes my skin crawl.

I’d make a lousy dom.

---

And finally, check out this cute kitty.

I wonder if I could make him purr…. I’d sure as heck try….

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

 888-738-3646.

That is the number for tech support for my Dexcom G6 finger poke free continuous glucometer system. It’s the number I need to call in order to tell them about the three sensors in a row that failed the exact same way at the exact same point in the two hour “warming up” part of starting a new sensor.

It’s the step I need to take in order to get back on track with my diabetes control. I had finally gotten it down into the healthy range when the previous sensor shut down and I am eager to get it under control again.

And it’s just a simple phone call, right? Just a few minutes talking to a total stranger and admitting to having a problem which might turn out to be all my own stupid fault

The sensors failed on Wednesday and it’s now Monday and I know I have to do it soon because I can feel the will to do so slipping away and it would be ever so easy to just let go and give in and let myself “forget” to do it and the next thing you know it’s six months or a year of no glucose control later and I have gotten much sicker and I am disingenuously claiming to have just “forgot”.

Which I did. Technically. But I could have held on to it harder instead of just deciding not to deal with it because it’s too hard and let it go slip sliding away into the depths of my mind to rest there with all the other things I should be doing, but don’t.

So with all that is at stake, it should be easy to just do it, right? It’s a no-brainer.

But no. It is hard to make myself do something when I have been “not doing it” for a little while. One of my all too easily invoked aversions has formed and the longer it remains, the harder it gets to overcome.

I need to do it. I want to do it. I have every reason to do it.

But I can’t make myself do it.

Or at least I haven’t yet.

I might have to work around it instead. Call the pharmacy and see if I can get a new box of sensors in the hope that the previous box of them failed because it was a bad batch.

Either way, I have to make a phone call.

But at least my pharmacist isn’t a total stranger who might have a very stressful to me accent that makes it hard to understand them.

Either way, I will get it done soon. Writing about it has helped me work through the emotions and I feel better about the whole thing now.

Maybe the key to overcoming these random aversions is talking them out. Pop the mental cramp by working the subject despite the pain and resistance.

Honestly, all paths out of my darkness involve a hell of a lot of pain.

But fuck it. I was born to suffer.

Might as well make that work in my favour for a change,.

More after the block.

---

Haven’t done it yet. Tomorrow for sure, no excuses, gotta get it done.

---

What the hell, more porn

And a few other bits n’ pieces, probably.

But first, a sexy bunny from out pal Chunie.

Or possibly a jackalope? Point is, hawt.

My god Chunie is amazing. Such extraordinary technical skill put to such horny use.

I feel both humbled and grateful. Truly, he is a blessing unto us all.

Amen and pass the Jergens.

---

Then there’s this happy couple :

I choose to believe that these two just finished a damn good buttfuck and are cuddling and nuzzling as they bask in the warmth of the afterglow.

This is what love looks like to me. Cuddles, and buttsex.

It’s the best of both worlds.

---

LOL. When the SPF^[1] of commercially available sunblocks started going up way back in the days of the ozone layer crisis, I found myself pondering the theoretical limits.

Like, what’s the SPF of a coat of paint? Or a brick wall? How goes skin color factor in? Does a pasty white dude like me need a higher SPF than James Earl Jones when he’s not playing the recently unmasked Darth Vader? And what about cats? What is the SPF of cat fur?

There has to be some upper limit past which literally no sunlight or UV can pass.

And it probably is made by Sherman Williams and comes in a wide variety of shades to match your personal style both inside and outdoors.

---

I would REALLY love to make something like this.

Sadly, the idea has been done to death and is quite ancient by now.

But I don’t care. It seems like such a great way to create a ton of genuine content with just a bunch of friends and a camera and your own wacky imagination.

So some day, I swear, I will make something like this. And it will be hilarious and epic and full of insanely quotable non sequiturs and be treasured forever.

By me, at least.

---

Look at this sexy doggo.

I really want to give him a good scritching between the ears.

Among other things. Rawr.

I’d probably end up wanting to take that collar off him eventually, if he will let me.

I just don’t like seeing someone tied up or restricted. Makes my skin crawl.

I’d make a lousy dom.

---

And finally, one from my hero, Braeburned.

Go for it, little otter dude! This is opportunity knocking! Get some prime dick now!

Or come home with me and I will see your adorable little ass goes home happy.

I will see you nice people again tomorrow,

Told ya I would continue it.

d. In what ways are you bigoted?

Because trust me, you are.

We all are. That doesn’t mean we are all bigots. A bigot is someone who consciously and openly has bigoted views.

And while few will actually admit to it^[1], there are plenty of actual bigots in the world.

But most people aren’t one. How ever, we all have bigotry in us. It can’t be helped. we soak it up through our culture and it ends up seeping into the deepest parts of our minds where no mere conscious belief can reach it.

We cannot merely delete bigotry from our minds.

All we can do is remain vigilant so we can suppress it when it inevitably shows its ugly head from time to time. And that means being honest to oneself about the fact that you, too, have bigotry inside of you.

And so do I. And so does everyone else.

So I ask again… in what was are you bigoted?

Because only by admitting that we might be can we ensure we are not.

e. Do you have enough?

Related to question A.

Do you have enough of everything? Hell, of anything?

No, right? And everyone feels the same way…. even those with far more than us. We are all programmed by society to constantly want more, more, more.

So is it even possible to ever have enough? And if it isn’t, what is the point of getting more? It’s just a short term treatment for an acquisition addiction.

And what if we did decide we had enough. What if we told society and the world, “No more for me, please. I’m good.”? What would happen then?:

Nothing, right? Words can’t change fate. And yet saying so rouses the same powerful irrational superstitious fear as the money question. As if saying we have enough would guarantee we got less than we could have and that is the worst possible thing ever.

And yet we wonder why even the billionaires are constantly grasping for more. Having enough is not even presented as an option in Western consumerism.

Name one example in popular culture of someone besides an Eastern religious figure or teacher who says they have enough.

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

f. What will we tell our kids when they ask why we didn’t stop climate change?

We’re headed for global disaster. Everyone knows it. The weather will just keep getting worse all over the world and eventually it will be more than our technology and our economic systems can handle and everything will fall to flaming ruin.

What will we do when all the food dies?

Billions will die. You are going to be one of them. So is everyone you love and care about, as well as your enemies, your acquaintances, your neighbors, your peer groups, your pets, and most of everything else.

And one day children who grew up in a world on fire will ask us why we did not o absolutely everything in our power to stop this from happening.

What will we tell them?: Because there was “nothing” all seven and a half billion people could do to stop a hundred billionaires from killing us all? Because saving the world would have been seriously inconvenient? Because we didn’t want to make it a whole “thing” that would be just, like, so much hassle?

Better start working on our answers now, during the last of the good days.\

More after the break.

---

I almost died

Twice. Sorta kinda.

Let me explain.

But first : I am not trying to assign blame or make anyone feel bad. I just have to write about this in order to process it.

OK, on with the show.

We were on our way to the Sav-on at Ironwood where I do my weekly Sunday shopping. We had the radio on and we were chatting and laughing and life was good.

We pulled into a T-shaped intersection and Julian yelled out to Joe and Joe pulled back and put on the brakes just in time for us not to be hit by some large white vehicle that rightfully blared its horn while it passed inches from the front end of our vehicle.

Then there was silence in the car as we resumed our journey. Joe mumbled something about not having seen the lights of the oncoming vehicle and also said some other stuff that I don’t remember.

I was kind of freaked out at the time.

For the next little while, I just sat there in the passenger seat, feeling my heart beat against my ribcage as I processed the shock.

I was very worried that the scare would set off a negative cardiac event.

That’s what I mean by I could have died twice (sort of). The crash might have killed me or the shock and scare of it might have given me a fatal heart attack.

I didn’t say much for the rest of the trip to Sav-On. I was pretty mad at Joe.

I’ve been in three car accidents while he was driving. One was totally not his fault – some idiot teens decided to park their vehicle on a VERY busy road.

Another was nobody’s fault. One of those moments in driving where things happen at just the wrong time for everyone involved.

But the third was totally his fault. He pulled into an intersection early while going “aaaah!” all jokingly and ker slam.

So I felt that this was more in the spirit of the third one. But I am not sure. It all happened too fast for me to know.

But I still have a tiny touch of PTSD from the previous accidents. Sometimes I will be in a car or a bus and some vehicle will be turning in our direction or easing into an intersection as we pass in the perpendicular direction or passing us in the next lane and for a split second I will completely panic because I know the vehicle is going to hit us.

That was before tonight.

It’s bound to be much worse now.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

This is going to be notes for a future lecture/speech/video/TED Talk or whatever.

The title is both meant to provoke and to warn.

It’s meant to mildly provoke my fellow thinky type nerds into saying, “Oh yeah? Well we’ll see about that!” and thus get them to read it.

I know it would work on me!

And to warn them that it may well actually upset them.

I mean, you can’t very well get mad at me for upsetting you when I said I would right from the very start, can you?

Oh, and one more thing : Most of this will be familiar to dedicated readers of this blog.

So feel free to skim.

OK, now on with the show.

a. Would more money make you happy?

If so, why? What would more money let you do that would make you happy? Is money the only way to accomplish that? Is the problem really a financial one, or an emotional one? Is the real problem that you are sad, or lonely, or insecure, and how would a financial windfall solve that problem? And for how long? Do you truly believe that money can buy happiness? Did you know you believed that before I asked these questions? And are you afraid that if you said money doesn’t buy happiness, that will somehow influence whether you get more in the future? How? How does that even make sense?

b. Why did you lock the door when you left home today?

Because if you didn’t, people would enter your home and take your stuff, right? But that’s not really true, is it? Sure, that might happen, but probably not. Someone would have to be actively going around trying every lock in your neighborhood or your apartment building to see if any of them have been left unlocked, and that would be pretty obvious and risky, wouldn’t it? And yet, how else would they even know? If you accidentally left your doors totally unlocked before going on a month long trip, then came back to find nothing missing, would you be relieved? Or sad? Why?

c. What would you personally give up to end world hunger?

Say all powerful aliens come to Earth and offer to solve our biggest problems – cancer, world hunger, Covid, whatever – but only if we all make a personal sacrifice that truly means something to us. What would you be willing to give up?

It could be anything. Your second favorite watch? Your intramural sports team? A couple of hours a week of your free time? Your favorite chip flavour?

And why does this question make people so uncomfortable? Why does the mere theoretical contemplation of making literally any personal sacrifice at all make people practically break out in hives?

We’d all agree, in theory, that a chip flavour is less important than a human life.

So why do we refuse to sacrifice one for the other?

More after the break.

---

---

Yet more fuckery

So after about half an hour of indecisive dickering and choosing then changing my mind on half a dozen restaurants, I finally order my usual Large Build-A-Bowl from my new fave place, Pokey Okey.

Damn do I love their food. I am becoming a big fan of this poke cuisine.

So I read a pretty damned good gay furry comic (NSFW) while I waited for my big bowl of tasty delights. (Seriously, read it, it made me feel so good. )

The phone rings, and I immediately know there’s a problem because I can hear my Dasher’s voice quite clearly and distinctly and that means I am definitely NOT hearing him via our building’s PA/doorbell system.

Which, patient readers will recall, has the worst audio quality in the universe.

He asks me if I am sure the buzzer number is 0601 because it is not working for him.

Plausible. So I decide to just go down and get the damned food.

I was too hungry and impatient to dick around with out atrocious doorbell system.

But I was, at that time, naked. That’s not a problem for me but society has a problem with big naked fat dudes in lobbies, so I got to get dressed.

I tell the Dasher I will be down in a few minutes and get dressed. This takes around five minutes. Seven minutes tops.

I finally get down there, ready to apologize for the delay… and the fucker isn’t there!

He just plain left. Didn’t even call me to tell me he can’t stay. Just fucked right off.

So for the second night in a row. I have to contact Door Dash and tell them they fucked up my order.

In other words, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

This time I said to hell with redelivery and opted for instant Door Dash credit instead. So my NEXT meal from them is paid for at least.

They even threw in six bux in “apology credit” on top of the refund, which is nice. And helps to soothe my aggravation.

I made supper myself instead. The main dish was the corn dog from last night’s 7-11 order, which seems fitting.

Oddly enough, it tastes even better reheated in the zapper than it normally does straight from the hot case at the 7-11.

Somehow the microwave brought a lot of nuance and depth to the flavour.

Maybe the hot case at 7-11 dries things out and the microwave drives the moisture back to the surface to be reabsorbed?

Anyhow, that’s tonight’s random fuckery by an increasingly dickish universe.

Maybe this is the cosmos’ way of keeping me actively aggravated so that I stay adrenalized and impatient and thus open to change.

If so, I have two things to say to the forces that bind the universe :

1. Thank you for your kindness
2. Fuck RIGHT off.

I think that about covers it.

I will continue the Questions That Will Upset You tomorrow. I have three more so far.

Who knows, I might think of even more upsetting inquiries before then.

Wouldn’t that be fun, kids?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.