Been enjoying my second incarnation in Fallout 76.

Amazing that it is still a game I can play for hours without getting bored. That’s just how fun and packed with content the game is.

The fact that technically, I have done all these plotlines before makes remarkably little difference. Sure, I remember doing these things before, but in no great detail and not in a way that keeps me from enjoying myself.

Started out as a melee only character but that got old so now I am all about my glorious, wonderful, zombie blasting shotgun.

There is a simple, atavistic joy in blowing away zombies with a shotgun. Especially if you can take them down with one shot, and I often can as long as they are close enough and I hit them dead center.

It’s well worth the effort. Chik-chik KABLAM, baby!

Feeling kinda sleepy and slow today. Must be catching up on sleep, which is a touch ironic because I was thinking about taking my sleeping pill, Quetiapine, today so I could do that very thing.

I guess just the thought of it was enough to trigger the desired response.

So today has been quite the sleepy day. Oh well, it’s not like I had hot plans or was going to accomplish anything important today.

The sad truth is that getting caught up on sleep might be the most productive thing I have done in a long time.

Not that I should be judging myself for being unproductive. I’m a very sick man, after all. Officially, all society expects of me is for me to do my best to get well.

Not that I do that either. That would cut into my precious video game!

Then again, so would dying.

But I don’t judge myself for my lack of productivity based on some feeling that I am somehow letting society down and failing in my duties as a citizen in life.

It’s because I want to be productive. I want to make things and do things and get something meaningful out of my time.

But this fucking mental illness gets in the way. I want so badly to shed it like a snake sheds its skin and be free to lead a healthier, happier life.

Instead, I am tangled up in all this mental garbage and stuck in a life that does not make me happy and that is leading me directly to an early death.

I keep coming back to this idea that I need some sort of source of inspiration and renewal. Some harmonious wellspring of warm, loving, healthy energy that can fill the wounds in my soul and help them heal. Something I can draw on besides my usual insufficient energies so I can finally be healthy and happy and strong.

Dunno where to get something like that. Faith? A lover I can rely on? Aliens?

I might just have to invent it myself. Build my own power reactor from the junk I have lying around in my soul.

Anything to fix myself and let me be the brilliant shiny star I was always meant to be.

More after the break.

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Something quite beautiful

What a simple and wonderful treat for all assembled.

Julian, please show it to Joe!

I was a little miffed that he changed the lyrics at first but got over it almost instantly because he sang so beautifully.

Plus, he really didn’t have a choice. I can see that now.

The original lyrics are…. well, not everyone’s idea of religion, let’s say.

Of course, my favorite version is still this one ;

Just had to share that with y’all.

---

Good for the soul

Take one of the most talented comedians alive today and add one of the most reliably explosive forms of comedy known to humanity, and you get this :

Peter Kay blows my mind. His timing and delivery are always flawless. He nails every punchline, his jokes always have the simplest and most accessible phrasing and structure, and his every-bloke persona is pure gold.

And god damn it, misheard lyrics are ALWAYS funny!

---

Yet more fuckery

What the everloving goddamned perpetual fuck, universe?

Why is everything going wrong lately?

So I order some stuff from 7-11 tonight, like I often do.

Ordered my usual three 2L bottles of Diet Coke to see me through till I go shopping on Sunday. plus a chicken salad sandwich and a corn dog for supper.

My order arrives, I wait the customary five minutes before going to get it, and then discover that what I actually got was six 1L bottles of Coke Zero, 2 large bags of store-brand Jalapeno and Cheese nacho chips, and 2 bags of dried mango slices.

Clearly I got someone else’s order. God dammit.

So now It’s up to ME to report this to DoorDash and get it all sorted out.

And of course, there is no “I got the wrong order” option in their problem reporting menu. I just knew that would be the case.

Apparently, nobody at DD thought of that issue. Idiots.

So I have to contact live (text-based, thank God) chat and explain it to them.

When I do, I am offered either money back or redelivery. Usually, I go for money back in the form of DoorDash credit as that’s instant and I order via them all the time.

But I still need that Diet Coke, god damn it.

So I opt for redelivery. Someone will come get the wrong order and deliver the right one soon. Meanwhile, I made and am eating my usual sort of meal.

No way was I waiting for the redelivery. I was too damned hungry.

---

Redelivery had occurred. The right order is here and the wrong order is gone.

I sincerely hope the two stoners who ordered that stuff finally get the snacks their munchies so badly needed.

The DoorDash deliverer was some old Chinese dude. He apologized in an “oops, sorry for this wacky mixup, ha-ha!” tone.

I rather curtly told him to forget about it.

See, because his fuckup involved both my food (and me being hungry!) and my money, it was not Patient Tolerant Sweetheart Fru who answered the door.

It was Grumpy Pissed Off Taurus Fru, and he’s way less nice than my usual self.

Whatever. It’s over now, and all it cost me was a fuckton of aggravation.

Why does life hate me?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I’m gonna have to drag all this out of myself but it will be worth it.

Our tale begins earlier this week when the sensor for my glucometer shut down because it had done its ten day tour of duty and wanted to go home to its family and that childhood sweetheart that’s been patiently waiting for it to return.

So I called the pharmacy and ordered more sensors, plus a couple of drugs I was low on. Julian went and picked it all up for me (thanks Julian!) and last night I was all ready to put on a new sensor and get things rolling again.

But then came the heart-stopping moment of horrifying clarity when I realized that I ha thrown the previous sensor away WITHOUT detaching and keeping the transmitter.

An of course, not only was said sensor now gone for good, but quite mysteriously the entire wastepaper basket I threw it out in was gone too.

Still don’t know WTF is up with that, to be honest.

And at this point I decided that there was no point trying to fight the tidal wave of self-recrimination and self-loathing that this realization unleashed and chose instead to just let it run its course and save my energy for picking up the pieces when it was done.

Quite mature and wise of me, I think.

And it paid off, because once the waters receded I was able to remember that I had another transmitter on my desk somewhere.

So I hunted it up and clicked it in place and got the sensor warming up.

Only to have it fail during the warming up sequence. Damn.

But I had two more sensors (they come three to a box) so I was not too worried.

The other two failed in the exact same way at the exact same point of warming up.

Because life hates me. And that’s so unfair when I am such a nice dude!

So now I have zero working sensors. I went on the Dexcom website to submit a tech support ticket for the issue.

The form crashed, and told me to call their hotline.

So now I have to work up the nerve to call them.

Then today, I called a cab to take me to Wound Care for my appointment at 11:30 am, then before it arrived I got a phone call from Wound Care^[1] telling me I had missed my appointment at 11 am.

Waddy fug? I’m sure my schedule said 11:30 am. But of course, I can’t find the schedule to verify this.

So for all I know, I just misread it.

So then I had to call and cancel the cab. Which was not easy for me.

All in all, the fuckery is running strong and thick right now. It’s getting to the point where I am afraid to masturbate because like, what if I crash my dick?

More after the break.

---

This is not enough

But I guess we already knew that.

After some failed attempts at fuckery by the universe, I did end up having therapy today.

We talked about my deep freeze of a childhood. It’s a subject that I am compelled to return to over and over again because I can’t seem to truly wrap my head around how very very wrong it was.

No, that’s not quite it. What I mean is… there is all this ice and snow and midnight tundra in me from all those years of having absolutely nobody in my life I could trust, talk to, or turn to at all.

I was a robot that went to school. I had no friends, my family preferred to forget I existed, and my teachers resented me and were frustrated by me.

Not my fault they didn’t know how to handle someone like me. I was just being myself.

Not my fault that I was smarter than them.

Anyhow. that kind of emotionally starved childhood leaves a mark, yo. I feel like it cuts into me like a long dark groove cut by a chisel into a block of wood on a lathe. It’s impossible to know how deep the damage goes both because I have no basis for comparison – it’s always been like that – and because the coldness of it all makes me too numb to feel the damage at all.

Not a coincidence.

So when I say I can’t wrap my head around the wrongness of it all, what I am really saying is that the amount of damage caused by such a rotten childhood is more than my mind can comprehend.

And it makes my internal world a very cold place. Doc Costin told me I need to learn to give myself the warmth and acceptance I never got as a child, but I don’t know where I am supposed to draw that from.

I have no experience of it. I don’t know what it is like to feel loved and accepted and wanted and worth something. Therefore I have no memories to draw upon, no internal source of warmth to apply to the rest of me to thaw me out.

No inspiration, no close warm personal relationships. no memories of a happier time, and absolutely no faith to provide the emotional inputs I need.

So I don’t know where this loving warmth is supposed to come from. I lack the physical and emotional vitality to generate it on my own.

It all has to come from somewhere, and there is nowhere in me that can do it. I need some kind of external source of loving energy and I don’t know how to find it.

But I am building up my ego and striving to love and forgive myself and hammering away at that cage of ice around my heart.

Maybe one day I will finally feel the sun and know what it is to be truly alive.

I will talk to you nice people tomorrow.

Feeling especially cranky and nihilistic due to petty fuckery from the world.

For example, my microphone, after refusing to work at all for months, suddenly started working. Sounds like a good thing, dunnit?

But it only works some of the time. It randomly cuts in and out. Not so much as to make it not worth using, of course.

That would imply mercy. Then I would just give up.

No, for maximum suffering, it has to work for random periods of time while also giving me the idea that if I hold it just right, it will keep working.

I figure the problem is with the cord. Which means a new cord would solve it. In theory.

But I can’t shake the irrational feeling that getting a new cord will just be setting myself for the universe to fuck with me again by having it make no difference.

Surely Lucy won’t take the ball away THIS time.

Also, this morning I had two different sites completely thwart my attempts at password retrieval via visual captchas that I couldn’t do because Doctor Vaezi fucked up my eyes.

No, I don’t know how many of these pictures contain a bicycle! Just give me my goddamned password before I reach through the internet and throttle you.

Ah, if only that was an option.

Actually, on second thought, we’re probably way better off without it.

Been playing the new character in Fallout 76. Facing a hostile post-apocalyptic world armed with nothing but a pitchfork is… stimulating.

It’s a surprisingly effective weapon. But I hope I find something with a little more dignity and a lot less American Gothic soon.

I feel like some kind of pre-NRA rural caricature of the angry xenophobic farmer chasing you off of his land because he thinks you are after his wheat and/or daughters.

Trust me, Pa, your daughters and your crops are safe! I’m gay and I don’t do carbs!

Your sons and particularly sexy male livestock, on the other hand….

And that’s how I ended up with a butt full of buckshot.

In my defense, it was a very handsome buck.

---

But enough of my drooling libido.

I am revising my opinion of Animation Throwdown. The combo thing is still interesting but there does not seem to be much strategy to the gameplay.

My entire strategy goes like this :

1. I play a character card.
2. I play an object card on said character card
3. Go back to 1.

And yet I win every duel. Boring!

So it might not hold my interest much longer. It’s possible that more strategic complexity will come in time, but I doubt it.

More after the break.

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Social anxiety is…

…hoping, PRAYING, that you get voice-mail instead of the person you’re dialing. And wishing there was a way to go directly to voice-mail without the person knowing until they get the message.

…waiting five minutes or more after the DoorDash person arrives with my food before going to get it in order to be sure you don’t have to interact with them at ALL

…dreading going out with friends even though you love your friends to pieces and know you will definitely have a good time because the crazy part of your mind only sees the act that physical and social stimulation levels will rise and that means death apparently

…raking yourself over the coals over and over again for a minor bit of social awkwardness that nobody else even noticed let alone faults you for

---

“So you’re saying you’re a badass?
“Hey, I am the WORST ass…. wait…. “

---

God damn do I love this song.

Didn’t know it was Jimmy Buffet til I looked it up, but it totally makes sense. He’s a very funny guy, as you can see.

A little disappointed at the relative lack of lyrics. Surely there was more comedy gold to be mined from such a perfect premise.

Like how about this bridge to chorus :

“There’s nothing good on the TV
So there’s nothing better to do…”

And that’s just off the top of my head.

Still, it makes me so happy that this song exists. And you have to admit, there is no other genre of music but country that could be so hilariously blunt and honest.

Let’s just cut the bullcrap. Wanna get drunk and fuck like monkeys on shore leave?

Thank goodness that with hookup apps, we are now approaching such an enlightened and honest state for straight people.

We fags have had it since forever, of course.

Funny how things are much simpler when there’s no chicks involved.

But don’t worry, ladies. You will get there soon. Before long, thanks to these apps, you will be free to fuck because you want to fuck and that is IT.

No further justification necessary. Thou art horny so thou shalt fuck. It’s a freedom we men have had since forever and you deserve to have it too.

Now go out there and get some cock!

---

Been feeling the futility of my existence today.

As in, looking ahead at my day full of nothing but eating, napping, blogging, and video games and saying “Is that really it? That’s all I am going to do??”

Funny how that only kicked in after I beat Fallout 76.

But it’s a good thing. I want to be restless and unsatisfied. I want to want more. I want to be discontent with this life of mine.

Because that’s the only way I will ever get motivated to change things. To grow and strive and reach out into the world to get what I want instead of rotting on the vine.

Nothing will change as long as I am comfortable. I have to become uncomfortable enough to be willing to put a lot of effort into getting comfortable again.

Ideally, even more comfortable than I was before.

Because now I am not just a limp lump of pointless protoplasm attached to computer any more. I have actually done some shit.

And thus I don’t feel worthless any more.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Well I finally did it. I finished that last quest in Fallout 76.

I was doing one of my favorite Events called Line in the Sand where you have to defend a military base against hordes of weapon wielding zombies called the Scorched.

And I love fighting off hordes of zombies to defend a fixed point. It really get my battle lust going and I love not having to wait for more enemies to show up.

I get to just keep on fighting and that makes my inner Klingon very happy.

And that’s when it happened : one of my fellow warriors fell in combat right in front of me, I revived him, and just like that, it was over.

I was done. I had completed all that was completable in Fallout 76. I had beat the game to the maximum level possible.

So now what?

After the first flush of victory, the inevitable feeling of loss kicked in. It has been really nice having a game that I could play for as long as I like every day for like six weeks, and now it was technically over. I was going to miss having that safety blanket.

It’s a lot like finishing a really good book. No matter how great the ending was or how much you enjoyed it, now you’re suddenly back in the pre-book world and you have to find something else to read and it probably won’t be as good and it’s all a bit sad.

Or like the day after Xmas. Call it the Boxing Day Effect. Or for us nerdy types, the post convention blues that set in when you have to go back to mundane life.

You get over it and move on, but for a little while, it’s depressing.

Of course, I don’t have to stop playing. After all, I have had a surprisingly large amolont of fun playing with no plotlines to progress at all. I could just keep going like these level 400+ people I see from time to time.

Or I could create a new character and start over. Could be a lot of fun going through the quests and things a second time, knowing what I know now, and building an entirely different kind of character.

A melee warrior, maybe, or a pistol packing desperado. Or someone who gets by on their charisma and luck. There’s plenty of fun possibilities.

But odds are that I am pretty much done with the game. I’m burned out on the game. It’s all started to seem like doing the same thing over and over forever, and that is pretty much fatal to any game no matter how good it is.

Makes me wish it could have as open a modding scene as Fallout 4 or Skyrim. That way there could be mods with more story content, new locations, more monsters, n all that other good stuff.

Plus, of course, loads of perverted sex of all kinds.

But a public MMO can’t be that open. It’s one thing to mess with the local copy of the game for your own amusement, quite another to mess with the world you share with millions of other players.

Believe it or not, there are some people who do NOT want to see my character get fucked up the ass by every male character and monster in the game,.

Weird, I know.

More after the break.

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From dusk to dawn

As the sun sets on my first Fallout 76 character, it rises on my second.

I knew I wanted to make him a post-apocalyptic barbarian type, big and beefy and prone to stabbiness, but when I went to name him, I was also feeling horny and perverted and full of mischief.

So I named him Slab Tailsplitter. Slab as a shoutout to the nicknames Mike and tbe Bots give Reb Brown’s character in the classic MST3K episode Space Mutiny.

And Tailsplitter because I wanted something really perverted (furverted, in fact) and gay sounding and I figured calling him Slut Buttrammer would get me banned.

In a similar vein, when it came time to name his home base, I took a cue from all those awesomely gay PNW place names like Mount Bachelor and Mount Husband and called his base Mount Stallion.

I had to look at a LOT of horse butts to find that image.

The things I do for you people.

I figure, I should get my perverted jollies where I can, plus I am a radically pro-sex person and wish to express my broad acceptance of all things sexual without any shame or guilt over what is a natural and wonderful thing called fucking.

But mostly it’s the perverted thing.

I have also checked out a free CCG (Collectible Card Game) type game called Animation Throwdown : The Quest For Cards.

It features characters from Family Guy, American Dad, King of the Hill, and Bob’s Burgers, and it’s pretty good.

The comedy is decent. I mean. my thighs remain unslapped but it’s not unfunny and that is what is important.

Mildly amusing beats offensively stupid every day of the week.

And the system is interesting in that card combos are built right into the game. There are character cards and then there are object cards. You play a character card and then on a subsequent turn you play an object card on that character and that transforms the character into a new, more powerful form,

For example, when I played “Costume” on Meg from Family Guy she turns into Sexy Cat Costume Meg, and when I played “Drugs” on Chris he turned into Nose Picking Chris for some reason.

Look, I didn’t write this stuff.

The great thing about the combos is that it keeps the game fresh. Any new card unlikes many possible combos and yet it’s all still easy to understand.

So so far, so good. I haven’t gotten all that deep into it but it looks to be both funny and interesting when it could have been neither.

That’s it for today’s edition of Diary Of A Gaming Addict.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Did the Wound Care thing this morning.

Nothing of note occurred. The major wound on my right leg is looking a little better than before, so some kind of progress is being made.

Would go faster if I could improve the circulation in my legs but I haven’t figured out a way to sit at this here compubox of mine with my feet elevated and when it comes to heart condition like mine, compression stockings are strongly contraindicated.

Oh wow, after drinking Diet Pepsi for a week, Diet Coke tastes all grown up and sophisticated by comparison.

Like smoking a fine Havana cigar after a week of bubblegum vape.

Or so I would assume,

Back to Wound Care. One other thing of note is that the nurse reminded me that I should be looking into getting orthopedic shoes.

Preciously I had more or less given up on the idea of comfortable footwear. No matter what kind of sneaker or insole I try, my elephantine gait flattens them within seconds, so I figured that I was simply destined to never walk without pain.

Like a Dickensian waif.

But I’ve had people suggest orthopedic footwear upon seeing my very horizontal shoes before and I figure it’s worth a shot.

I mean, I can’t be the only flatfooted fat dude in dire need of arch support out there. Somewhere there are people as big as me who can walk like a human, with comfort and dignity and pride.

So I will look into it. The province might even pay for them, which would be nice, as I imagine custom orthopedics are quite expensive.

Then again, given their stance on podiatry, they might consider walking a luxury.

Whatever it costs, if it works, I will pay for it. To be able to walk without pain would make a huge difference in my life. I would be way more likely to do what the world says is the best form of exercise for both obesity and depression and go for walks.

Assuming my heart can take it, naturally.

Speaking of which, haven’t heard back from Doctor Bui after my wonderfully snarky voicemail last week.

I am not surprised. They have obviously decided it’s easiest to just ignore me and not have to deal with how they have fucked up so far.

How very wrong they are. If I don’t hear from them by the end of the week, I will be registering a complaint with the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

I might do them the courtesy of leaving another voicemail first. One that makes it very clear what the stakes are if they continue to leave me to die.

That would satisfy my sense of honor. I would have given them a chance.

Plus, to be honest, recording that voicemail would be fun. I have rarely had the chance to really bring the hammer down on those who deserve it in my life.

Might as well make the most of it.

More after the break.

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Some good news

My blood sugar seems to have righted itself once again and I am currently rocking a solid 10 mmol/L, which is my personal dividing line between healthy and not so much.

It’s purely a rule of thumb. Just needed an indicator. So I made one up based on what I remember from diabetes class, seeing as I completely failed to Google up the answer to what it freaking should be.

God, I hate doing research. I am way better at asking than answering.

Anyhow, I am back in the normal range, yay!

---

Meanwhile, in my real life

In other words, video games.

I think I am finally getting burned out on Fallout 76.

If so, it’s had a damned good run. I’ve played the dang thing for 8-10 hours a day for six weeks now and that’s a lot of quality game-time by anybody’s standards.

And all for 18 bucks! Not frigging bad.

I have not entirely given up on it yet. I’m checking out the mod scene to see if there is anything interesting to spice things up, and I am still pondering starting an entirely new character from scratch.

I just have to overcome my completion compulsion first.

See, I still haven’t found an ally to revive, and that’s the last thing on my current character’s quest list. Once I do that, I can move on.

But it’s so haaaaarrrrrrd.

People never seem to get killed while I am watching them. Even pretty low level characters seem to be endowed with immortality and indestructability when I am there.

Meanwhile, I died like a hundred times in the course of doing today’s Daily Op.

I um… went in vastly underequipped. No power armor. melee weapons, only ranger weapon was my trust .50 caliber machine gun, which is by far my most powerful weapon but not exactly suited for stealth kills. Ooops.

Mental note : prep thorough for Daily Ops in the future.

They are quite intense.

I have also been checking out this new game platform type thing from EA called Core.

It’s basically a 3D world that acts as a gateway to various games all based on the same physics engine, the Unreal engine.

Man, I barely even remember Unreal.

I’ve tried several games and so far the most fun is this weird little game where you blow up balloons then sell those for money you then use to make your balloons bigger and each breath pump up your balloons more and then you buy pets who help you blow up your balloons and the whole thing is about as unglamorous as gaming gets but I have to admit it’s also pretty fun.

I wouldn’t want anyone cool to see me playing it, though.

So Core is basically a heck of a lot like Second Life if Second Life had been well designed from the start.

Oh, and without all of Second Life’s fucking, sadly.

Got to make everything safe for the kiddies.

As if their tiny heads would explode like in Scanners if they saw people fuck.

Remember folks, the Sexual Revolution ain’t over.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Had an idea for a song.

It’s called “I Guess I Probably Love You” and as the title suggests, it would be told from the point of view of someone who is not sure about this whole love thing but ya know, the evidence is pretty clearly indicating etc etc.

It would be about nerd love – the best kind – as well as making fun, in a mild way, of how certain and emotional and passionate most love songs are.

I imagine it as being in an EDM style with filtered vocals and lots of old-school computer samples to make it feel more “digital”.

Doubt I will ever actual create the thing, which is a pity. Could be huge.

But at least I wrote the idea down.

---

Feeling cranky, irritable, and horny as well as the usual post-sleep feelings of dizziness, disorientation, and lightheadedness.

No nausea this time though, which is good, because I’m eating.

I guess I will post more smut.

What I love about this one is that incredibly fuckable facial expression on our lucky queer boy’s face. That look of innocent eagerness and joy is sexier than sex to me and make me want to pounce that jackalope (?) and hump his cute lil butt off.

Then glue it back on and hump him some more.

No wonder the ringtail and his friend want to spitroast Jacky Lope up there. I bet there’s a lineup down the hall of boys wanting their turn at either end.

Bet the teachers are wondering why they are suddenly giving out WAY more detentions.

Now check out this sexy feline :

Chunie’s work is amazing, as you can plainly see. Not only are his technical skills beyon superb but he has that rare ability to infuse a pinup with real personality.

I mean, look at that shy but mischievous expression. He sees something he likes and boy do I wish it was me. And he’s thinking about giving it a pounce.

Here, kitty kitty. I got some fat, slow, juicy prey for you….my butt.

Kind of like this thicc boy :

…only not as fluffy. More’s the pity.

I hope my big fat butt looks that good to those into that kind of thing. I could feel downright sexy if I has an ass like dat.

More cushion for the pushin’. eh boys?

Then there’s this fun scene :

I’d be a tad insulted if I was the top in this scenario. Um, I’m kind of buggering your butthole with my penis. Is that not enough stimulation for you?

OK, one last smut pic :

I can identify with both parts of this scene.

I can imagine being very happy to have figured out how to hug my snuggly soft love of my life and get fucked at the same time.

I can also imagine being that snuggly soft lover and ending up a victim of my adorable feline lover’s excess of affection.

Either way this is a super cute and cuddly scene and I heart it very much.

More after the break.

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Waking the dreamer

But first, more smut! Just kidding.

---

The war had raged for decades on end.

On the one side were the Sleepers. For all of modern history, they had ruled the land of Yume with an iron fist, suppressing all but the most benign and sterile of activities in order to create a society of easily controlled passive commenters who never caused trouble as long as they got their bread and circuses.

And because there were thousands of kinds of bread and hundreds of circuses to choose from, metaphorically speaking, the people assumed they were free.

The crux of their power was the cosmic entity known as the Dreamer. A massive best the size of a moon, it slumbered in the upper atmosphere of Yume.

The people were told that their reality was one of the Dreamer’s dreams and that only the Sleeper government could keep the people safe by keeping the Dreamer asleep.

But over time, an underground resistance grew. Slowly at first because it had to invent its own concepts and language to even begin to describe the reasons for their discontent with their “perfect” society.

But then, once the right words were found, though, it was like a match dropped into a pool of gasoline. The movement went from harmless seeming idle talk to masses of militant protestors in the blink of an eye, and before long the movement had a name – the Wakers – and a goal – to Wake the Dreamer.

The Wakers said that the Dream they lived in was a nightmare and a prison, and that only by Waking the Dreamer could they escape their fetters and face the dawn of true reality and finally be free.

The only way to do this was to dismantle the Sleeper regime and turn off the subtle deep magnetic music that kept the Dreamer sleeping and finally let it Awaken.

By waking It, we wake ourselves, said the Wakers. We too have been lulled to sleep by this safety obsessed Sleeper regime, and now we will rise from our beds, brush the dust from our bodies, and feel the sun on our faces.

And so the battle was joined. It was bloodless but not nonviolent. Physical violence was rare and mild but the verbal, emotional, and psychological violence was extreme and at times even grotesque.

Screaming matches between groups of supporters were common. Every communication medium was choked with propaganda. Streets and mass transit stations changed hands multiple times a day.

Even part of the government itself fell to the Wakers. But never for long. And no matter how hard the Wakers fought. the Sleepers maintained control.

And so Yume became a planet of enclaves, interplanetary trade and industry ground to a messy halt, and the once magnificent intellectual powerhouse of the University of Yume Prime became yet another entertainment district.

And so it remained until one day…. the Dreamer woke all by itself.

But that’s a story for another time.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Hoo boyo, did it work.

Decided today. Saturday the 16th of October, would be the best day to take a Quetiapine and try to get caught up on sleep for once.

It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for quite a while now. I have been way behind on sleep for a very long time. I could feel my ability to concentrate and remember things slipping away to be replaced by the shiny white blank feeling I’ve talked about before.

That white void might seem harmless, even pleasant in a vacuous way, but it spells doom for my working memory and mood.

And I have the solution : Quetiapine. But as patient readers know, I kept putting off using it because I did not want to have to deal with the immediate fallout from taking one, namely sleeping all day with barely enough time awake to eat and blog before I have no choice but to let sleep’s cloak o’ertake me once again.

So I took a big Q this morning at around 10 am and went to bed. Jerked off a little, stretched a little, played my synth a little . Then fell asleep.

Smash cut, I wake up and it’s 3:45 PM and I am extremely confused and disoriented and I am really tempted to get up, take a leak, then go right back to bed.

But I know I have to eat and blog or I will end up feeling far worse, so I drag myself out of bed, get lunch together, and sit down to blog.

And here we are. I got around six hours of continuous sleep, and w00t to that. I’d been in that pattern where I couldn’t sleep for more than 1.5 hours for far too long and we all know that’s no good because the really good deep REM sleep doesn’t happen until you have been asleep for at least 2 hours.

And I am still quite sleepy. This has been but an interlude and despite the Diet Pepsi I have been drinking, the tide is pulling me down and I must sleep again.

---

Me versus sleep. Round 2

Slept a whole bunch more. Now it’s a bit after 7 pm and soon I will need to figure out what I want to order via DoorDash for supper.

Assuming my VISA still has enough $ on it. Just tried to check my balance and that’s apparently not a thing any more, so I suppose I will just keep spending till I get an “insufficient funds” error and give up.

Not an acceptable solution. But it’s all I got right now.

I am going to investigate something called Visa Debit. Debit cards that work just like VISA cards, or at least that’s what I hope that means.

If it does, then fine, I would just deposit my cheque into my bank account each month and spend it that way. It would amount to the same thing as my reloadable VISA as far as I the consumer am concerned,.

Whatever. I just want to continue to be able to buy stuff online. You would think that would be super easy in this virtualized time.

But no, of course not. The modern motto is :

Nothing is ever simple, nothing is ever easy, and nothing ever just fucking WORKS.

At least, that’s how it is in my life,

---

At least I am a lot more awake and coherent now. I am pretty sure I still have some major hardcore sleeping to do in the very near future, but at least I can string some thoughts together semi-coherently and making with the words is not nearly as hard as it was in Round 1.

Being mega sleepy like this hasn’t been fun, but it’s not been as bad as I thought it would be either.

Sure, I’ve been very sleepy and slept a ton and been kind of blearily incoherent while awake, and that doesn’t make life any easier.

But I haven’t been abjectly miserable while awake either, like other times I have done this. Dealing with reality might be more stressful and confusing than usual, but I am not utterly miserable either.

So yay for THAT.

Well that’s it for this segment. I’ll be back for the denouement when my food arrives.

---

On second thought

I ended up not bothering with ordering food tonight.

My reasoning might not have been strictly logical, but whatever. It’s not like anything important was on the line.

It’s just food.

Basically, my computer was being crazy slow and I had no idea how long it would be that way so whether I tried to solve it with a reboot (aka turning it off and on again) it was going to be a long time before I got to order, let alone eat, so I said fuck it and went and made supper while my computer was grinding slowly towards opening the browser.

Part of me is disappointed to be missing the “treat” of ordering in and I probably still could have done so if I had been more patient and less cranky but I was feeling hangry so to hell with it.

I think part of maturity is realizing that no matter how wise you get, sometimes you are going to do dumb shit for dumb reasons and that’s fine.

Human beings are not capable of being fully rational and “smart” all the time. We only have a certain amount of higher intelligence to use in any given day and once that is used up or committed elsewhere we are stuck with the same emotional and/or intuitive reasoning all higher mammals employ.

It’s certainly not random nor is it completely mindless. It’s merely not as precise or “intelligent” as our full reasoning faculties.

The important thing for the likes of me is to shield these less-than-rational decisions from the later harsh and inhuman judgment of the ego and superego.

Yes, that was a “stupid” decision. But you rationalist guys were not around to make the call for whatever reason, so we were forced to take out best guess.

It’s like a boss who refuses to give you input beforehand but loves criticizing your every move after the fact.

Well fuck you, Rick. We did the best we could.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Feeling restless and cranky and fussy right now.

Jerking off without completion did not help. I think a big messy ejaculation could have done wonders for my mood.

Hard to be cranky when your balls are wonderfully empty. Ah, satori.

But no. Instead I just ended up more frustrated and agitated than before I so much as touched my dick.

That is sadly the score most of the time I give spanking the monkey a try. I rarely get to squirt. It still feels great and is great fun (and great cardio…. whack yourself thin today!) but the male brain is programmed to drive hard (heh) towards that explosive moment of release and when it doesn’t get it, we get ornery.

Of course, the problem could be that masturbation ain’t enough any more and what I really need are some hot hard hung dudes to fuck my face and ass.

That’s known in sex circles as being “spitroasted” and it sounds fabulous.

I could also use someone’s sexy butt to rim and ride. I’m bottomish but not a total bottom. I get the urge to fuck too sometimes.

I mean, some butts are just begging for it.

And boy do I love to eat ass. Not only is it tasty good fun and hot as the proverbial fuk to do, if done right, your partner makes the cutest darn noises.

I don’t even mind if they are not entirely clean. Adds flavour.

Now how can I further alienate people… oh I know. Porn!

Here’s some stuff I got off the subReddit gfur, which stands for gay fur and is for posting gay furry porn.

Like this fun scenario!

Now like the invisible man said, let me be perfectly clear : do not do this in real life. It will not go well and you will be a total creep for doing it.

But as a fantasy it’s very sexy to me. I heart the idea of tempting a sad and lonely straight nerd boy into a life of bisexual debauchery by offering to be his “girl” and give him all the blowjobs and anal he wants very much.

And hey, don’t worry…. I’m the gay one, not you. After all, you’re not doing anything with me that you wouldn’t do with a girl, right?

And aren’t I all soft and warm and feminine and receptive just like a girl? I mean, does it really matter that I have a peen and not a vag when I can give you everything you ever wanted in a woman right here at home and so much easier to access and from someone so much easier to deal with?

No PMS, no drama, no mind games, no sexual extortion, no hangups, no worries about my reputation, no turning you on then refusing to put out, and you know I know exactly how to please you because I’m just like you.

Men know what men like. That’s all I am saying.

And all the fucking and sucking you want, 24/7, 365, with no need to reciprocate and no drama, just me making you cum so hard you see stars whenever you like.

I’ll even lick your asshole. And not just a cursory slurp. I go DEEP.

So what do you say, handsome? Ready to have the best “girlfriend” ever?

You know, it occurs to me that I just might be evil.

Mua ha ha ha.

More after the break.

---

The filth continues

And now, more obsessively frank sex talk to make you uncomfortable!

But first : did Wound Care today. Routine. And quick now that I am doing to like three bandages. Took less than fifteen minutes.

Two of those are going to be here for a while though. One is on the callous on my foot, and who knows how long that will be there.

And the other is on my big wound below my right knee. And it seems to have hit a plateau in its healing. It hasn’t gotten any better in about a week. So it might be some time before it too is gone like the one on my left leg.

After Wound Care, we went to Shopper’s Drug Mart so I could get their reloadable Visa, only to be told they “got rid of it”.

Hmmm. Just like my bank Vancity did. Now I am worried that there has been some change in banking regs or some shift in the wind in financial circles that is going to lead to the entire species of reloadable Visas going extinct.

Which would definitely put a crimp in my lifestyle. I don’t qualify for an actual VISA card.

And I utterly fail to see what the problem could be with the reloadable kind. They are in no sense a loan and they get their money up front so there is no risk.

I can only assume that it seems risky to middle class types because they associate them with us poor folk and you know what THOSE people are like. Anything associated with us dirty nasty poor folk must be untrustworthy and criminal and use only for evil.

You know, just like us.

Hell, at this rate, I might just end up back at Money Mart, assuming THEY still want my money in transaction fees.

What else. Still just kinda dicking around in Fallout 76. At least I have started sort of looking around for low level characters who might get “killed” and need reviving.

But other people don’t see to die nearly as often as I do. Hmmm.

It’s a testament to how well made the game is that dicking around with no plotlines to follow at all is still pretty fun.

I go around kicking ass on baddies in Events (short pop-up scenarios) and level up and sometimes improve my gear and that suits me fine.

For now, at least. I am starting to itch for renewal and that means starting a new character and I don’t want to do that until I finish that last fucking plot point.

Sometimes I hate how stubborn I am.

Anyhow, enough of that stuff, on with the outrageous smut!

WORD COUNT : 1024

Oh. Seems like I ran out of space.

Oh well. Here’s one for the road.

Awwwwww! Isn’t that dragon a cutie? All shy and unsure of himself.

I just want to give him a big hug then help guide his dick.

You can do it, my scaly friend! Now tap that sexy butt!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

In a few minor ways.

First, therapy got truncated by the powers of fuckery.

There I was, waiting for the call from Doctor Costin. Therapy is usually between 1 pm and 2 pm on Thursdays.

So 1 pm came around, and I waited. And waited. I wasn’t worried at first because he is often 5 to10 minutes late,

Plus, though it shames me to admit it, by the time the appointment rolls around the sick part of me is actually dreading it.

Not for any rational reason, of course. It’s just that dumb ol’ Trog cowering in fear at the thought of being pulled from the “safety” of his deep dark grotto and forced to pull himself together and focus on the here and now.

So at first that part of me was like, yay, the later he is, the less therapy I “have:” to do!

Yeesh. I really need to shuck that unworthy bullshit. I am way better than that.

Anyhow, he did not end up calling until 1:30 pm, whereupon he informed me that he had left me a message on my answering machine^[1] saying he wanted to start early.

And suddenly, my mind flashed back to when I had been getting a drink from the kitchen shortly before 1 pm and I had seen that there was a message waiting for me on the machine but thought, “Nah, I don’t have time to listen to that, Doctor Costin will be calling me soon!”. D’oh!

Now before you ask, I don’t know what the connection between him wanting to start early and him being half an hour late is.

I didn’t think to ask.

We talked about the reasons I have had such trouble getting anywhere in life. I told him about my realizing that pride is the opposite of shame and that’s why I have to let my ego soar if I am to dig myself out of this hoary old hole of mine.

It’s not enough just to be “neutral” or “realistic” or whatever. That might stop things from getting worse (yeah right) but it won’t solve the problem.

I need to develop a truly massive ego to overcome my truly massive shame,

And having a huge ego has always been a possibility for me. I mean, I was a straight A student without study. I turned in first drafts and got top marks. I wrote a play in 24 hours and everyone loved it. Everyone at VFS said my writing was hilarious.

I’ve conquered without effort my entire life. That’s pretty fucking amazing. I’m pretty fucking amazing, I have every right to a huge fucking ego.

So I hereby claim mine.

I’m fucking awesome and I deserve massive success and fat stacks of cash.

Amen and pass the Cristal.

---

Oh right, the other odd thing.

The other odd thing was that we had a power outage.

Brief, but memorable.

Mostly because the first thing I thought of when the power went out was that my computer had just died.

So when Joe knocked on the door and said there was an outage, it was actually a huge relief. Oh thank god.

Amazing how rapidly my mind leaps to negative conclusions, isn’t it?

More after the break,

---

Tower of Power

So yup. Gonna take the restraining bolt off my ego and let it roam free. What the hell. Pull out all the stops. The sky’s the limit. Bring on the delusions of grandeur.

I’m the smartest man….IN THE WORLD! The smartest person who has EVER LIVED! My mind is powerful enough to crack walnuts with the slightest thought! I have keener insights into humanity than Superman at a nude beach! I’m funnier than a drunk monkey with a boner! People should weep with joy just knowing I’m around! They should pay big money just to bask in the golden aura of my brilliance! They should have me on every talk show in the world just to hear what I have to say! My birthday should be a global holiday! My birthplace should be a shrine! PEOPLE SHOULD WORSHIP MY TOE SWEAT!

And so forth and so on. That got old fast.

Makes me realize the main thing limiting my ego besides depression is my overdeveloped sense of irony. Any time I imagine myself with a truly epic ego, a part of me rolls its eyes and says “Yeah, right. “

How GenX of me.

The truth is that really overinflated egos disgust me. Trust me, you ain’t that hot. And you will be far better off in the long run if you stay down here with us mortals who will remind you that you are merely human after all.

Which is another limiting factor to my ego. In fact, it might be the strongest one. It’s that I don’t want to lose the tiny bit of connection to humanity I have left by letting an inflated head carry me off into the stratosphere.

I’ve talked before about my nightmare about floating up and off like that. What it’s really about is not just elitism (ick) but insanity.

I feel like if I went that route and lost my humanity, I would wander off into the depths of my own mind and go completely insane.

Might never come out of my internal labyrinth again.

And I know it would not be an endless stroll through Elysian fields. No technicolor dreamscapes for me.

It would be more like being cornered by your worst enemies in a dark alley. There would be no escaping my inner demons any more.

I’ve been tempted, though. The idea of giving up on reality entirely and finally completing the process of withdrawing into my mind that began when I was raped has seemed very appealing to me at times.

But I can’t go now. The planet needs me!

See? Ego. Solves a LOT of problems.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I’m sorta of two minds on the subject.

On one hand, I desperately want to be noticed. I want to shine, shine, shine for people and have them bask in my glow. I want to show the world (especially those parts of the world with money) how brilliant and talented and funny and deep and wise and spectacularly humble I am and I want to reap all the praise, recognition, and cold hard cash such luminescence deserves.

I’m fucking amazing. Give me stuff.

I am a poet both lonely and obscure and that shit has got to change. I have a lot to say and a lot to tell this crazy old world that it definitely needs to hear.

Whether it likes it or not!

I honestly and truly believe that my words backed by my vision and my will could help make the world a better place. I am a thinker and communicator of rare depth and insight and I ache to add my voice to the global conversation and help move public thought forward like the visionary I am.

And, ya know. Get paid to do it. I don’t need to be rich but a solid middle class income would do wonders for my lifestyle and my self esteem.

Heck, I might even be able to afford to finally upgrade this computer.

It deserves it.

So basically, I want the whole world to see how shiny and amazing I am. Gaze upon me and wonder, ye mortal folk! I am your future.

On the other hand, I want the exact opposite.

I want to disappear forever. I want to be invisible. I want to get as far away from my fellow humans as possible.

Like…. Unabomber far away.

That’s the unhealthy part of my mind, obviously. The part I call The Troglodyte or Trog for short. All it wants is to squat in its deep dark hole at the bottom of a deep dark cave and think deep dark thoughts about how miserable it is.

It’s not a lot of fun, is what I am saying.

And I am trying to evolve past it. It’s a disease and it’s holding me back. Keeping me down. Keeping me from getting all that shiny success I crave.

But it’s still with me. Like a legacy system you can’t replace, I am still running a lot of really rotten old software and it is going to take me a lot of time to replace it all with something more competently designed.

I am really taking my paradoxical self-loathing to new depths today.

It’s still a lot easier to hate myself than love myself. It’s still the default state. In order to love myself I have to let my ego run rampant in text like in the above.

It’s highly therapeutic to do so. The only cure for shame is pride, and so I have to build up my pride to the point where it can fill in the hole left in my self-worth by all that pointless and baseless self-loathing.

I mean, what do I have to hate myself about? I’m an amazing dude. Sure, I have not made much of my life yet, but I’ve been very sick with a serious mental illness.

And I am getting stronger, even as my body grows weaker.

Some day I will break free of this cage and find my way to someplace where I might finally get noticed.

And I really (mostly) want that.

More after the break,

---

Medical Misadventure : This Is A Test

Did the labwork for Doctor Caswell today when I was out running errands.

I keep forgetting that going to the med lab is a radically different experience than it was before Covid. Now you either make an appointment (which I never remember to do) or end up waiting for like an hour.

Luckily, I had another errand, so instead of waiting in the hallway outside the lab, I just went and got my check cashed at my bank.

That cut like half an hour off my wait.

Blood draw went fine. I am cool as long as they only have to go in once. Yeah it hurts but whatever, it’s just pain.

It’s when they can’t find the vein and have to dig around that I get upset.

---

Carb addiction is real

Not that I ever doubted its reality.

The science is sound. High carb meals make our bodies secrete a hormone that acts a lot like a tranquilizer and/or depressant and it’s to that hormone you get addicted.

But as I have been cutting down on the remaining carbs in my diet, I have been experiencing the reality of the addiction and that makes them VERY real to me.

For example, there are the pangs of denial. T You would not BELIEVE how my emotions reacted to my ordering nothing but Caesar salad from Pizza Hut,

Great was the wailing and the gnashing of the… gut, I guess?

And along with that came the flashes of temptation. The thought of getting garlic bread to go with it kept popping into my head, along with the memory of the taste of it.

I even added it to my cart. But then took it out again. Fuck that shit.

I’m beginning to really hate carbs. And they are freaking everywhere. Practically all snack foods, both savoury and sweet, are just lumps of carbs.

I think that if carb addiction was considered as real as alcoholism or other substance abuse issues, we’d find that 90 percent of people are junkies.

So for me, it’s no extra carbs of any sort until my blood sugar is down to normal. Right now it is 17.2 mmol/L and that is not acceptable.

I want it below 10 like it was before. And I will keep blasting it with insulin till I get there.

Were it not for my bum ticker, I would also be exercising to help lower it.

Oh, that reminds me….

Tempt not the snarkshooter

I am proud of myself for leaving a pretty snarky voicemail when I called Doctor Bui’s office today to remind them I exist.

I mentioned how they were supposed to have gotten back to me ages ago so they had clearly forgotten I existed again and how I really hoped I heard back from them soon because I’d really rather not die.

There was more but those are the highlights.

And that was pretty snarky,…. but I can get much, much snarkier.

They have yet to taste even one tenth of my power. What I left them today was a warning shot. My way of giving them an idea of what they might be up against.

And if that doesn’t work, I will escalate.

Oh brother, will I escalate.

Because I’m trying to save my fucking life here.

That means my “by all means necessary” clause has been invoked more fully than ever before, and trust me, I mean ALL means.

So what happens next is really up to do.

I will not die without a fight.

I will not go gentle into that good night.

I will rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And I will take as many SOBs with me as I can if I go.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow,