Of course I’m not logical. I’m human.

And if pressed, I will even admit it.

In public, even!

And so on the books at least. I am one hundred percent philosophically and psychologically correct in my views.

Why of course, Doctor. I know that I am merely another one of seven and a half billion human beings. I have a fully human exoskeleton and genitals. Friends know me to be a warm, sensitive and caring mammal. Ha ha, he laughs exactly like a person would.

As you can see, I don’t quite buy it.

Not for any sane reason, I assure you. All logical (ha ha) evidence points to me coming from human parents. My childhood memories seem to agree.

But within me are layers upon layers of compacted permafrost laid down by year after year of social isolation and abuse and that makes it hard to feel human at all.

Especially when you are keenly away of how different you are. From my first day of school I knew I was not like the other kids. There was the teacher, them, and me all alone. just like at home there was my parents, my siblings, and me.

I wanted to reach out to my fellow kids. I wanted to make friends and get along and be part of a group and all those other things that were like part of a different world to me.

Stuff I only knew from the TV. Closest thing I ever had to a happy childhood was watching sitcoms and game shows.

God that’s sad. Here, have a hankie.

You okay now? Then let’s go on.

So I ended up becoming quite the weird little duck. A friendly little alien but just too damned weird to deal with.

And no inclination to force the issue.

Like I always say, things go strange in the dark. Isolation is not good for humans, especially the immature specimens.

I may never rightly grasp the unimaginable damage that did to me. How can you quantify starvation? What happens when absolutely none of what is supposed to happen because the social stimulation isn’t there?

I’m like a feral child only without the close knit group of friends.

---

Would it be too cute to call a group for high IQ gay men Homo Sapiens:

---

This makes my brain scream.

pic.twitter.com/Gx2qVA2rF4

— bolty/bolto (@AmbJohnBoIton) November 19, 2021

So I know I am an illogical error-prone human like any other. But I don’t feel like one a lot of the time. My connection to the rest of humanity is tenuous at best, and achieved via indirect means like the Internet.

Or TV, when I was a kid. Video games today. Reading books. Playing with my synthesizer. All things that do not require another human to cooperate or coordinate with me and thus doable all alone.

The question remains whether I can change that to let someone in.

I guess that would make a good test on whether I am human or not.

Honestly, I could go either way.

More after the break.

No more losers

I have a subtle but profound language hack I want to pull off.

We need to replace “loser” with “nonwinner”.

See, the thing is, anyone can be a winner. There is no automatic limit to the number of winners there can be. Ergo, everyone can imagine that they are one of the winners.

But a nonwinner is an entirely different beast. By definition, most people are not the winner in any contest.

Wouldn’t be much of a competition otherwise.

Thus, calling them “nonwinners” highlights the fact that a “winner take all” system is the one most likely to leave you fucked over and left in the dirt.

Trust me, “everybody gets enough” is way more likely to benefit you.

And we’ll still have lots left over for other stuff!

---

And now, the eyes

This is probably nothing.

But it could be something.

I’m having trouble seeing today. In fact, I think the problem has been creeping up slowly for a long time and I have been too distracted by the whole heart thing to realize it was getting harder and harder to see.

What did that butcher Vaezi do to me??

Basically, I have a lot of afterimages in my eyes. ^[1]

I always have, mind you. It’s never been more than an occasional nuisance when I am trying to see something on a black background and being mildly more bothered by flashbulbs and other flashes than the average person.

But today it’s been a real problem.

Worse, another phenomenon has emerged from the static : sometimes the afterimages are so thick that they appear solid and make me think someone or something is there.

So now I’m hallucinating.

I always knew this day would come.

Seriously, tho, Vaezi and I need to have a wee chat. My operations were in May and I still can’t see worth shit.

And he was suspiciously very breezy and offhand the last two times I saw him. Almost like he wanted to get me in and out as fast as possible without giving me time to think.

For some reason.

I think he fucked up and my eyes are suffering as a result.

God, please don’t take my eyes. I could take almost anything else, even ending up in a wheelchair – like I move around a lot in the first place – but don’t take my eyes.

Finally, a little thing I wrote earlier :

Skit : The Miracle of our Ages, a skit where characters describe all the everyday miracle technology all use. “I think I will go to one of the many temperature-resistant closed rooms in our home m get a frozen meal from the mysteriously subzero chamber in my cold box, and use a powerful microwave emitter to thaw and cook said meal, then eating said meal while watching strange people whom I do not know and will never meet caper for my amusement. ”

I can imagine this being said by a very, very sarcastic parent.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Physically, I am not at my best.

My chest is a little sore where it was operated on, I feel kinda weak and tired, and I feel a tad feeble and lame.

But that don’t bother me none.

Because fuck it. Emotionally, I am feeling better.

I feel more upbeat and positive. A whole new chapter of my Fuck It, Whatever club has opened up and I am the charter member. It’s never felt easier to just let the petty shit slip and get back to trying to live.

I’m in the market for whatever makes me feel better.

That means no trying my hopes to big fat dreams. Those aren’t going anywhere, of course. I still want to write TV for a living, or something similar.

I still want to show the world what an amazing and magical dude I am.

But in the meantime you need a life. Maybe a job. Maybe a boyfriend. Maybe a tightly knit fetish community that brunches. Who knows.

Something to make life more satisfying, interesting, and fulfilling for lil ol me.

Like the man said, the world’s a feast, and most poor bastards are starving to death. I plan on tucking in and eating till I am well and truly full for a change instead of living a pauper’s life of constant spiritual and emotional starvation.

Fuck that noise. Gimmie some.

I know life can be better for me if I only take the time to make it that way. This life of just waiting for things to come my way like I’m a sessile filter feeder like a barnacle sucks. I want to wander the world in search of my fortune, or at least somethin better to accupy my great big palatial brain.

I’m bored with all this piddling around. Video games are not enough any more. They are nothing but toys to occupy those who already have lives and jobs and all the rest.

They’re not supposed to be anyone’s substitute for life.

They are merely entertainment.

So in my lazy, unhurried way, I will poke around looking for happier things to do with my time. Better things, things that have a higher effort to reward ratio.

More bang for my buck, so to speak.

After all, what are the odds that this tawdry little clapboard life of mine, wallowing in the mire of my own filth like an ill kept pig and hiding for the world like nobody told me the war was over, is the best a smart fella like me can do?

Surely I should at least be able to make a living.

Even the retards can manage to do that.

And I don’t need to be afraid of life any more. Once I am all healed up, I will finally have the vitality and vigor I have always lacked.

And I am not going to fuck it yup. I’m going to use it to have fun, dammit. Fun!

No matter what it takes. Somehow I am going to get this happiness thing working.

And God help whatever gets in my way.

More after the break.

---

Smack my bitch up

In this case, the bitch is my goddamned appetite.

It’s being difficult. I have zero appetite. Right now eating seems as unnatural and bizarre as trying to drink your Kool-aid through your nose.

Plus it feels like I got rocks in my stomach. Pointy ones, and they’re none too clean either. It really feels like nothing is flowing right and as proof of that I have also been getting serious lower back pain.

Those two often bunk together : stomach upset and back pain. Like I have said before, I think one sets off the other.

Right now, I think gas gets trapped in my lower gut and builds up into a nasty ball and that ball pushes against the intestinal walls like a very gross balloon and that in turn pushes against my back muscles and brings me pain.

So I could get around at least some of my back problems by getting better at belching.

Or getting that damned gas out somehow. I’m not fussy about route.

I spend most of my time alone.

I will try to remember to attempt to void flatus next time my back hurts. Or when my appetite has vanished. Perhaps the real culprit is my love of carbonated beverages.

But um, let’s not go crazy. I am not ready to give them up yet.

I’m as addicted to them as the rest of the dang world!

So I think I will give this advanced belching a try.

---

The Fulghum Test

Came up with this earlier and I think it’s killer.

We need to start referring to Libertarian and Libertarian types and other right wing brats as “having failed the Fulghum test”.

Robert Fulghum is, of course, the author of the mondo smash hit “All I Ever Needed To Know I Learned In Kindergarten”, a book of funny, heartwarming stories.

It’s actually quite good. But I am a huge fan of that kind of gentle, warm comedy.

That’s why I love James Harriot so much!

Anyhow, saying they failed the Fulghum test is to say they failed kindergarten because they never learned to share.

It’s a way of setting them up for a massive insult when they ask what it means.

And I mean every word. These moral retards have no place in adult conversation let alone political discourse. As far as I am concerned, there is no scorn hot enough and no shame deep enough for these political pollutants and their anti-moral stance.

Good Lord do I miss the conservatives of old. From the era before Gingrich and Limbaugh. I had a lot in common with those people. I understood them,.

I disagreed with them on a lot too, but they didn’t seem like enemies. They seemed like people with a different POV.

But a series of increasingly stupid presidents forced the GOP to lobotomize themselves along with them – well, it was that or learn to think for themsves.

I miss the true blue Les Nesman/Ned Flanders conservative.

Or hell, even the stuffy corrupt rich establishment conservatives.

At least they still believed in civilization!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

No letter from the hospital with my prescription and lab req yet. Damn it.

Julian is being kind enough to check the mailbox once an hour, and when he does so he tries to determine if the mail has been delivered today.

If it hasn’t shown up by 3:30 PM, I am going to call the contact number in the email from the hospital and have a chat with them about options and consequences and such.

The smart part of me really wants it to show up ASAP so we can get the testing done and the prescription filled and I can be all ready for the procedure tomorrow^[1].

The dumb part of me wants it to fail to show up so I don’t have to go do the scary medical thing tomorrow morning.

What can I say, I’m complicated.

---

Oh for fox’s sake!

Just got a call from the department doing my procedure.

They asked me the usual Covid screening questions. No, I am not sneezing or coughing or bleeding out the eyes. No I haven’t been licking strangers. No I have not been out of the country. I’ve barely been out of the apartment.

But while I had them on the phone, I asked them about the whole lab tests and prescription letter, and it turns out there never was one.

I repeat, there never was one.

Turns out that when I said yes to them emailing me the documents, they took that to mean, “I will then print said documents with the printer I totally have and there is therefore no need to mail me jack shit. Ta ta!”

Whereas I thought it was just a backup measure for the hard copies they were sending.

Oh well. The procedure will go as planned regardless. They will just do the lab tests in the hospital beforehand.

And the prescription can be started after the surgery. But it MUST be started ASAP because it prevents post-op complications.

Something to do with platelets. Sounds pretty important.

Oh well, at least I can just relax and mentally prepare for the procedure now. It is 16 hours away and counting.

This time tomorrow, I will hopefully have a mended heart. Wish I could be completely out for it. I am tired of this medical shit I got to be awake for.

Whatever happened to taking a nice nap and waking up in a recovery room?

But like I said before, it’s not like I remember my angioplasty. Whatever they had me on was real good. I just remember being very relaxed for a while. Not technically asleep, but not all that far from it.

So really, it’s a matter of showing up, letting them do their thing, hopefully taking a nice long recovery nap in hospital care, then coming home.

I am nervous about the post-op stuff. I don’t ever want to be in a situation where if I forget to do something, I will bleed out and die.

Here’s hoping it doesn’t come to that.

More after the break.

---

Dear St, Paul’s Doctors….

You know, I remember that song from my 1970’s childhood. It was a huge hit, and rightly so. It’s one of those songs that does what everyone else was doing at the time and yet somehow does it better than the rest.

It gets it right, is what I am saying.

And I remember loving the song back then because it was so upbeat and happy without being cheap and fake.

It has a great vibe to it, and then as now, I am all about the vibes.

I remember hearing it on the radio and singing along. I remember seeing it performed on TV (by Donnie and Marie, no less). I even remember hearing it from someone’s tinny cheap transistor radio at the beach one day.

Yet somehow. until I looked the song up last week, I totally missed that the male singer was Elton Freaking John.

I guess, inasmuch as I thought about it at all, that Amazing Duet and Elton John At the Height Of His Fame were too big to fit in my mind at the same time.

Anyhow, I assume you get how it relates to my current situation.

In 8.5 hours, I will be admitted into St. Paul’s Cardiac Catheter ward and they will start prepping me for my angioplasty.

Basically, they are going to make an incision, use it to slide wire catheters through my veins in order to first use balloons to clear the blockages from my heart arteries (hearteries) then install expandable tubes call stents into said arteries in order to prop them open and keep them open.

Simple. Routine. Easy. Just a bit of plumbing work, really.

ON MY FREAKING HEART.

So yeah, you could say I am nervous. I am not used to having to summon up this much faith in the competence and focus of others and it feels very weird.

But what choice do I have? When the shit is really going down, despair and doubt are luxuries you cannot afford. Everything has to be focused towards making it through.

So I am going to summon up all of my small but vital supply of faith in others and go into this thing like I am a patient on a medical drama and thus I know everything will be fine at the end of the episode.

Use the power of the fact that I was raised by television to see me through it all!

I’m not allowed to eat after midnight, because apparently I’m now a Gremlin. And only clear fluids after midnight, and only until three hours before the procedure. so 4 am.

That will be an adjustment for me. But whatever. Another challenge to trudge through.

Right now I will go to bed and get some sleep before it’s go time.

Next time I talk at ya, I will have an upgraded heart.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow if I am up for it.

This is very embarrassing to admit. I am blushing hard as I type this, I can feel it.

But I completely spaced on the fact that I had Wound Care at 3 pm yesterday.

Forgot it entirely. The last time I recall recalling it was Friday afternoon. So in the 24 hours after that, I managed to completely lose all conscious memory of the very simple fact that I was due for a bandage change et al at 3 pm on the 13th of November, 2021.

I only found out when I got a phone call from one of the nurses at 3:15 pm or so asking if I was showing up. Then it all came slamming back into my mind like a runaway freight train and my shame exploded across my face like a Roman candle.

I felt so dumb! There was nobody home to give me a ride so I said no, I would not be showing up for my appointment.

Probably could have taken a cab but I was too ashamed to think straight.

So yeah. I oopsed. And in such an uncharacteristic manner!

I mean yeah, I am terribly absentminded. Guilty as…um, whatever. But I usually manage to keep my appointments in mind. I dunno what went wrong.

Too preoccupied thinking about my heart procedure, I guess.

Speaking of which….

---

Aaaah! They’re going to poke wires into my heart! HEEEEELP!!!

Been trying to get all my freaking out about the fact that people will be mucking about in the ARTERIES of my HEART Tuesday morning out of the way in advance.

It does not aid my state of mind that things have not gone as planned at all.

1. I was supposed to be sent for a test of some sort before the procedure. I have heard nothing of said test. Technically. it’s not supposed to take place until tomorrow, the day before the procedure, so they still have time to give me a call, but I would have appreciated some goddamned warning,.
2. I was supposed to get a detailed information packet with all the specifics about my particular procedure in the mail. I have not.
3. I was also supposed to get a second email with additional instructions for me about how to get ready for the big day by now. I have not.

So IDKWTF. I will be beyond pissed off if I end up not being able to get the procedure done because someone failed to do their job and the whole thing ends up being delayed till God knows when in the new year.

THIS JUST IN : Nope, I’m once more the idiot.

Just looked up the original email they sent. Turns out it had attachments. One is a lab req. Another is a prescription for some drug I should be taking.

They appear to assume I can print this shit out and take it to the lab and my pharmacy.

Um, no, I cannot. I assume that’s why something was suppose to come in the mail.

So I feel dumb for missing the attachments (which only appeared in tiny text at the bottom of the email and my eyes are fucked) but it would not have made a difference if I had noticed them earlier.

I guess I will have to hope the packet shows up in the mail tomorrow.

If it does, I’m going to be busy.

If not…..I may well be fucked.

More after the break.

---

I’ll give you a topic. British Columbia is neither British nor Columbian. Discuss.

---

Let the energy flow

We’re gonna delve deep into the guts of my mind tonight.

Recently, I realized that my motivational logjam is more than it seems.

It’s no quite that I lack the motivation or energy to do thing. Said motive force is present and ready in me,

It’s that an ancient and maladaptive instinct causes me to clamp down hard on it whenever it dares to show its head.

I think it might be a vast overcorrection for anxiety. My mind responds to literally any rise in energy level like it’s the start of an anxiety attack and savagely suppresses it.

Even if it’s just the totally normal and necessary rise involved in moving into action on anything at all.

Not only does this destroy 90 percent of my ability to act in any way outside my normal and very well established comfort zone, but all that rise and clamp down builds up an incredible amount of tension in the system from all that stifled energy.

So my goal now is to learn to just let the energy flow into action. It’s a somewhat Tao lesson because it’s really about letting go of control in order to gain control and somewhat Zen because it’s about getting out of your own way and letting your instincts and your inner soul do all the heavy lifting.

Sort of the same thing, I guess. But from different angles.

Essentially, I want to learn to stop stopping myself. If I have an urge to do something productive, the path of least resistance is to just let myself do it.

Why suppress the energy that is actually moving in the right direction?

Why stop myself from doing the things I actually want to do or to have done?

Why slam on the brakes all the time? No wonder I feel like I am driving with the parking brake on all the time.

Metaphorically speaking, I am.

So it’s a matter of un-suppressing myself. Of letting myself just do stuff because I feel like it without a prejudicial notion of what that is supposed to look like or where it is supposed to lead and without an attempt to exercise an illegitimate kind of control over my life by stifling every urge just to make things “predictable”.

Predictable… and dead. Cold. Lifeless. Inert. Moribund. Etc.

I am fine with not actually knowing what I will do next. I am completely cool without knowing how my day will turn out or where I will end up.

The fun is in finding out, right?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Otherwise known as “reality”.

A potentially very dangerous notion has been popping into my head lately. And it’s all the more deadly because it appeals to me so much.

The idea is to take the attitude that most of what goes on in the world outside my head is “outer office business” that I do not give the slightest of shits about.

I’ll just chill here in my tiny but very comfy inner office doing my thing like I do. Taking naps, playing games, writing stuff, and leaving the world to take care of itself.

This idea strikes me as both very tempting and extremely wrong. And I don’t know why.

The sense of danger is more easily understood. My escapist tendencies and extremely strong imagination (related?) have always made me feel like I was barely clinging to reality with one hand and that at any moment, I could let go and fall into a solipsistic catatonia where I give up on reality altogether and retreat into my mind completely.

This has always been one of my worst nightmares. I have always assumed that being alone in my own skull would leave me defenseless against my host of inner demons and make me a full time resident of my own personal hell.

But lately I find myself thinking it might not be that bad. Maybe it could be my own personal heaven instead.

Sunshine, blue skies, and fresh air,
Grass and trees everywhere,
A cozy little bungalow
Everyone I love and know
Everything I want, I get
Blazing fast internet
Food and drink’s the very best
Fascinating party guests
Good people ’round me would collect
And every single kind of sex
And all the dials cranked to 11
This is my idea of heaven

So, that happened.

If these attacks of poetry continue I may have no choice but to become a rapper.

Anyhow, finding the idea of turning my back on reality appealing gives me the same feeling of terrible danger that my suicidal thoughts used to give me.

And it would be a kind of suicide, no doubt about that. A metaphysical one, perhaps, or an existential one if you can handle the pretension.

That assumes it is even possible, which it probably is not. No matter how much I might want to turn off all inputs in favor of my inner vision, reality would always creep in.

Like, for instance, when I need to pee. Or eat. Or masturbate.

So unless I could think my way into a coma (nope), I am pretty sure my mental escape plan could not possibly work.

At least, I hope it can’t.

But if it can, I think I would come back to reality eventually. Sooner or later, I would get sick of myself and need fresh input.

I am accustomed to a very rich diet of mental stimulation, after all. Going cold turkey from that might be rough.

Anyhow, so yeah. Maybe letting the outer office take care of itself would be okay.

Might give me a lot more time to learn to be myself.

More after the break.

---

Escaping into slumber

Like I always say, sleep is death without the commitment.

Put another way, being asleep is the ultimate escape from reality that doesn’t come with a burial plot. When you are asleep, there is no stimulation of any kind from the world and you don’t have to deal with anything at all.

It is the best defense against my depression and anxiety and avoidant personality disorder and against life in general, so it’s no wonder I abuse it like I do.

But we knew all this before. Recently I realized that it goes even deeper than that.

On a deep level, I am always trying to go to sleep.

That’s why the moment I start to feel sleepy, I start heading for bed. My ability to resist sleep is shot as a result. Any time I have to stay awake regardless of sleepiness, it makes me very anxious and I feel trapped.

Of course I feel trapped. I am cut off from my favorite escape.

And this speaks to a constant desire to escape period. I suppose that’s a manifestation of anxiety at the deepest level. Even when I am having a good time, part of me wants to run away and find a deep dark place to hide from everything.

And if I feel safe enough, take a nap there. Leave this scary stressful overstimulating messed up cold unfriendly world behind me me for a while.

I don’t want to be this weak. I don’t want to find even my extremely low stress life too much to deal with on a regular person. I want to be strong and vital and tough and able to withstands the stresses of everyday life instead of being scared of the world.

And who know. Maybe I will be stronger once my stents are in. God willin’.

This constant desire for escape sucks a lot of the joy out of life because I can never truly relax and just be happy in the moment. Part of me is always counting down the minutes until I can escape back to my bed.

Even sitting here right now, typing away, part of me is watching the clock and counting how much time I will have to sleep before I get together with J&J at midnight.

And I am hardly miserable. Writing is work but it’s work I enjoy. Yet I want to escape it.

Even when I am hanging out watching stuff off the DVR later with J&J, and we’re having a lovely time, part of me will be calculating how long it is till I can escape.

And it has nothing to do with the company or the activity.

It’s all about this endless drive to escape that pulls me back into myself like an inward tide sucking me down into the depths of my twisted soul.

And I am getting really fucking sick of it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Let’s take another stab at making myself aware of the effect I have on people.

It’s a very tricky thing for anyone to contemplate because it’s so intricately tied with our core sense of self that can feel like an eye look at itself.

But enough stalling. Let’s make the incision and see what we find.

I know my effect on people is strong. I’ll own that right away. I used to hide behind a cloak of negative self-worth and tell myself that nobody ever pays any attention to me, they barely even notice me, and so on.

But that was a cheap dodge used to avoid having to take responsibility for my powers.

There’s a lot of freedom in powerlessness. Even helplessness. Some people would rather remain impotent than have to be responsible for their actions.

I’ve been one of those people. Sigh.

So yeah, I can have a pretty strong effect on people. After all, I’m quite unique. Charismatic and strange and witty and warm and wild. I see things from a very unusual perspective and that means talking to me can be quite eye-opening as I share my deep insights into the world and life, wacky one moment, then serious, then strident, then sarcastic, then whatever moves me next.

I don’t see myself as chaotic and unpredictable. But then again, I’m the eye of the storm, aren’t I?

The more positive interpretation is that I’m interesting. Fascinating, even. You never know what I am going to say and that makes me a great conversationalist.

Especially when you add in my almost hypnotic charm. It draws people in.

But I am not for everybody. I can be quite overwhelming. I am much too much for some. Others just find my wacky charms irritating.

Victims of a sad disorder known as “being a boring old grumpy-pants”.

And I can also be quite frustrating with my general cluelessness and lack of awareness of my environment and general clumsiness.

It’s a good thing I’m cute. That’s all I am saying.

And often people just get tired of the show. Being my audience can be exhausting. I love to shine bright for people and that can be great for a while but at some point, some people just want to turn off the light and get some sleep.

Then there’s my lack of self-care, which can be quite horrifying to be around.

I am quite the mixed bag.

Overall, I think my effect on people can be quite pleasant if the target and I can get past my initial shyness and awkwardness.

I need to stay aware of my capacity to captivate and enchant people. I do my best to keep people at arm’s length.

Perhaps I take that too far. I can be hard to get close to, which is especially heartbreaking when I attract people like I do.

Let the right one in, as the movie says. Don’t be a siren, luring people in only to have them get dashed to pieces on my rocks.

That said, all any of us can be is ourselves. And I am a shiny, shiny star.

Those sailors will just have to look after themselves.

More after the break.

---

Letting the bubble burst

Finally I am….

Letting the bubble burst
Letting the curtain fall
Letting my spirit grow
Tired of being small

Letting the sunset end
Letting the dawn begin
Letting the logic fail
Inviting my feelings in

Letting the iceberg melt
Letting the costume fall
Letting the demons die
Not going to mourn at all

Letting the flood begin
Letting the teardrops flow
Letting the bushel burn
Now everyone sees me glow

Letting my spirit soar
Letting the sparkles fly
Never been here before
Might wanna shield your eyes

Letting my north star rise
High into darkest night
Finally riding high
Things will finally be… all right.

---

Some of that could become a song, I suppose. In a musical.

One with rabbits. And shiny costumes.

Rabbits In Space : The Musical.

---

I think I get why whenever I imagine myself cleaning, I’m also crying.

It’s not particularly flattering.

But I think a part of me is still waiting for the rescue, comfort, and nurturing that I never got as a child and that my developmental timeline insists is due.

And if I am cleaning up after myself, obviously that means I haven given up on this magical rescue every happening, and so I am crying like a baby.

A baby left to cry.

Clearly, realistically, that magical rescue ain’t ever going to happen and so logically I would be far better off accepting that and moving on.

It’s as easy as 1-2-3!

1. Rip out your heart
2. Set it on fire
3. Stomp out the flames

Nobody is coming. So there is no point in remaining helpless and clueless in order to attract a nurturer. Nobody ever is going to pick me up and wipe away my tears and hold me close while telling me everything’s going to be fine now, you’re here, you’re home.

Everything is going to be warm and good and loving again.

You won’t be left out in the cold any more.

You can come home to stay.

I can tell it to myself. I might even believe it for a while if I can keep the hounds of my self-loathing from ripping that lovely dream apart.

Bad doggies. No dream biscuits for you!

I try to be my own good parent. But you need to have that inside you first, I think.

Right now I feel like I am just barely strong enough to at least think about it.

But I am not cut out for being two people at the same time.

I’m just no good at multitasking!

But there is room in me for self-love somewhere. After all, I am a lovable guy. If I was someone else, I would be extremely sympathetic to my plight.

Instead, I’m just pathetic. Ha ha.

Time to sleep. Wake me when I’m a real grownup.

I will talk to your nice people again tomorrow.

It’s not good to be smarter than all your teachers.

And everyone else in your life. Siblings. Parents. Neighbors. Adult or child, big or small, male or female, you’re smarter and stronger than them all.

And without even trying. It’s not even close.

And children need people smarter and more powerful than them to act as guardians, authority figures, moral teachers, and sources of greater wisdom.

Most importantly, it lets children feel like they are not alone in the world. That there are powers above them keeping them safe and looking out for them. That it’s not just them alone in the world, to sink or swim on their own.

No child can survive on their own. Not even the geniuses.

Growing up, I always knew I was smarter than my teachers. And not just that. I knew I could defy their will whenever I wanted too.

I inherently grasped that authority requires cooperation. I knew I could just stand their and refuse to comply and there was nothing they could do. I knew that I could outsmart, outwait, and out-stubborn them.

Again, it wasn’t even close. This is what I mean when I say I was and am more powerful than they are.

And yet, I was innocent in my omnipotence. I knew no better. I was just being my sweet little superpowered self and had no idea that I was casually defying (and defiling) the laws of the social world that bound everyone else.

What a silly little godling.

The teachers didn’t know what to do with a funny little critter like me. And I was too delicate and otherworldly to demand what I needed from anyone.

I didn’t even know that was an option. Hell I didn’t even know what I needed, or even that I needed things I wasn’t getting.

I knew I was scared and lonely and often very very bored. I wanted the attention and the approval of my teachers because that was all I knew how to get.

I didn’t know how to get along with my fellow kids at all.

And it was mutual. They didn’t know hot to get along with an alien child either.

I mean, who does?

The thing is, I was pathetic. I say that not as self-criticism but as a descriptor of my effect on others. I was very wimpy and clingy and desperate and that kind of thing makes someone very hard to respect.

And yet, at the same time, I demolished school work without even slowing down and was so far ahead of the others they could barely see my tail lights.

I was one weird little duck.

If only there had been a higher power to take me on. Someone strong enough and powerful enough in mind and will to handle me.

They didn’t have to be smarter than me. My babysitter Betty handled me just fine and while she’s no dummy, I was smarter than her too.

But she had a strong will and personality and that worked.

I feel like in some ways, I’ve been looking for her replacement,

More after the break.

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Not all baby birds fly when they’re kicked of the nest.

Some fall to the ground to die in broken agony wondering what the hell happened to the warm loving world they knew just moments ago.

The birds consider this to be just the cost of doing business.

They concentrate on the ones that made it.

The others don’t matter any more

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Tastes too good

Here’s a science fiction-ish concept to explore :

What if someone invented a food that tasted so good it was instantly and deeply addictive? Something that activates the reward center of the brain with such ferocious intensity that people immediately lose interest in everything else?

The first victims would be the people who developed it. I picture mature, sober, intelligent scientists getting into brutal fistfights over the samples.

The question then becomes how does it escape the lab. I picture there being an automated process that uploads the results from their research to a central server once a day and co-locates it a bunch of other places so it can’t be stopped.

The product is flagged as “very promising” so lots of people make test batches, and the madness spreads from there.

Because there are always those people who absolutely must share the great new thing they have found with everybody.

People who have tried the product become shells of their former selves, caring about nothing except for that next glorious bite.

In fact, the economy only keeps going because someone has the bright idea of paying people in the product.

Let’s call them Cookie Yums.

At some point, the public becomes aware of this threat and reacts. Vigilante groups pop up vowing to keep their area Cookie Nums free. Stores that stock them do mad business but risk being firebombed by angry mobs. So do the factories of companies trying to create their own version of it.

For there is NO YUM but the TRUE NUM!

Governments scramble to keep up. Laws banning any addictive food regardless o chemical content are drafted and re-drafted and wrangled over and sweated over and finally passed, but it is far too late.

It spirals out of control as mobs of Yummies take over factories and force them to produce nothing but Cookie Yums 24/7.

Yummies splinter groups start kidnapping prominent anti-Yum leaders and forcing thjem to try the Yums. The anti-Yums start attacking trucks carrying Yums, which quickly escalates to them attacking the factories making them,.

The news becomes like reports from a war zone. with news of this factory being taken over by Yums and this other one lost to Anti-Yum mortar fire.

Finally it would be straight up civil war all over the globe.

This idea came to me when I was reading about supra-normal stimuli and the terrible ways experiments with these over-strong stimuli have messed up test animals.

It could happen to us.

And I am not sure what the hell we could about it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Found this interesting and informative video today :

It’s about that whole “the Civil War was not about slavery!” bullshit that has been making people from the South look bad for a surprisingly long time.

See, what struck me was how quickly the “Lost Cause” lie emerged after the Civil War. It was barely a year after the war when that journalist coined the term.

And that narrative caught on quickly for obvious reasons.

But wait… were they so obvious?

Only when you add the missing ingredient : shame.

A mere year later, Southerners were deeply ashamed of the very thing they had so recently believed in so fervently they went to war to protect it.

What changed them so radically? The plausibly facile answer would be “losing the war”, but losing wars does not always cause such a radical shift in the very heart of public morality and private belief.

Sure, Germany was ashamed of Hitler after WWII, and that shame transformed them into one of the most liberal and progressive nations on Earth. ^[1]

But losing WWI didn’t do the same thing.

It has to be that even before the war, and even as they fought for it, a lot of Southerners were ashamed of slavery. My guess is that the biggest pro-slavery movers and shakers were all rich plantation owners who stood to lose a lot of money if they were forced to give up their slaves and that everyday poor Southerners went along because they were victims of manipulation by rich people and their political flunkies just like today.

So the fact that those same poor Southerners are STILL defending slavery is so tragic as to be not even one bit funny.

What I do find funny is the nature of the lie. They claim the war wasn’t about slavery, but the state’s right to CHOOSE slavery.

How is that any better? If someone said “I’m not fighting to fuck geese, I’m fighting for people’s RIGHT to CHOOSE to fuck geese”, nobody would be fooled.

You’re a goose fucker either way, dude. The argument is semantic at best.

So I think we should start mocking these modern deniers by partly agreeing with them.

Say “I agree that the Civil War was really about state’s rights… to choose slavery.”

“The South was the victim of the North’s aggressive desire to end slavery.”

Or, “The Civil War was really about economics… the economics of slavery.”

Go ahead and nod along with their cowardly obfuscating bullshit but always add that it was about slavery nevertheless.

And if they say, “It doesn’t matter what it was about…. “, reply that it therefore doesn’t matter that it was about slavery.

And if you are in the right frame of mind, remind them that the only honorable way to deal with shame is to face the facts, admit to everything, take your lumps, and then retreat with your dignity intact.

If they could have brought themselves to do that after the war, or at any time since. it would be ancient history. All peoples have historical monstrosities in their past. Confessing and owning up to them simply means you are grown-ups now.

But denying it shows you are not mature enough to sit at the big boys’ table at all.

Yes, I’m looking at you, Turkey!

More after the break.

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It is just barely possible to believe something not because one knows it to be true but because one knows it to be a good thing to believe.

The ability to do so is called “faith”, I think.

It cannot be learned.

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No child under 5 has ever liked their mother’s new haircut.

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It’s called Normal Food

And it’s a restaurant.

Hear me out.

There is a market, at least here on the Wet Coast, for a restaurant that serves “normal” food. By that, I mean straight down the middle standard North American cuisine.

Things like pot roast. Mashed potatoes. Corn on the cob. Pork chops. Green salad. Apple cobbler. Chocolate cake. And so forth.

All done exactly the way it is traditionally done. No “fun twists”. No “a new take on…” No “comfort food” that forgets that the most important part of comfort food is its familiarity.

“You love your mom, right? Well here’s a fun twist : your mom with onions for eyes!”

Just absolutely bog standard North American food. Nothing remotely weird on the menu. Just good old home cookin’.

There are people out there desperate for the familiar foods of their childhood and the crazy thing is how hard it is to find it sometimes.

Even Denny’s sneaks a “twist” in there now and then.

The idea is that this would be a haven for both cuisine conservatives and the merely nostalgic for simpler and more innocent food.

And when you really start to dig, you realize there is a huge number of dishes in the standard North American cookbook.

Here’s some more : Fried chicken. Green beans. Chicken Noodle Soup. Baked ham. Donuts. Chocolate chip cookies. Dinner rolls. Onion rings.

Oh, and no attempt to make them healthier either. I am as concerned about public health and our toxic eating habits as anyone, but this ain’t the place for that.

And it doesn’t have to be a fixed list either. Foods can become “normal” over time. Nor does it have to be the same everywhere.

After all, there’s plenty of variation both in what is standard cuisine in your region and exactly how the more standard dishes are cooked.

So a great deal of market research would go into creating the menu for each region. And constant attention will be paid to diner’s feedback.

Like Fox News, this business model requires staying as close to the customer as possible in order to tune its product to their needs.

Ambiance would be “homey”. Tables styled like kitchen or dining room tables. Wallpaper like you’d see in anyone’s house. Atmosphere relaxed and informal.

All in all, I think it could be a very profitable restaurant chain. And if it really catches on not just as a chain but as a movement, it could expand into other eras to provide “normal” versions of other things with bewildering numbers of “weird” options.

Normal Shampoo. Normal Toothpaste. Normal Motor Oil. Normal Sheets. Normal Dog Food. Normal Television, even.

The possibilities are endless. The popularity could be enormous.

And just think of how happy it would make people!

Only problem is, now I’m hungry!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

---

I think when you ask a drunk person if they are drunk, they say no because they are afraid that if they say yes, they won’t be allowed to keep drinking.

“Oh, you’re already drunk? Then no more for you!”
“Nuuuuuuu! Why didn’t I liiiiiie?”

Plus, drunk = vulnerable and people don’t like admitting vulnerability.

But mostly it’s the first thing. .

---

Life without trust

Time to take another crack at this tough nugget.

People crack nuggets, don’t they?

Anyhow, the thing is, I don’t trust anybody. But it’s not as bad as that sounds.

See, I have this way of reading people very deeply. I have x-ray vision on the emotional level and I really “get” people. I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember and it’s an ability I intimately rely upon.

So one might say I don’t trust people because I don’t have to trust them. Trust is like faith^[1], it covers things unknown. I know people. So who needs trust?

Everyone, as it turns out. Because even a powerful scanning empath like me can “know” people they, well, know. People with whom they are familiar enough to feel like they understand them.

And that’s not most people.

Somehow, I have to deal with the other seven billion jumped up monkeys on this planet. That means learning not to fear them by default and that means going beyond what I know about them and that means trust.

Or faith. Whatever.

And that’s a tall order for someone with the early childhood traumas I had. I’m the poor little monkey raised in isolation then introduced to other monkeys. Instead of connecting with them and socializing, I freak out and see them as a threat and get as far away from them as I can.

Plus, ya know. I was raped as a preschooler. Doesn’t exactly foster a trusting attitude.

But how does one learn trust? By trusting, I suppose, which has a Catch-22 ring to it.

And still leaves me in the twisted forest of my own distorted interpretations of events. I might well trust the objectively right person or thing and still see betrayal and abandonment where there is none.

Without trust, life is very cold and calculating, at least in part. Part of me is always the chess player, plotting my moves out, seeking the advancement of my position.

But what choice do I have? It’s all I know how to do.

Luckily that’s not all of me. I’m also the warm and funny and sensitive person that people know and love.

And a lot of other people too. Sigh.

If I could learn to trust, I could finally relax and be a natural, laid back, comfortable in his own skin kind of guy.

Instead, I am paranoid, reclusive, and desperately lonely. My mind is open but my heart is closed and nobody can get very close to me at all.

But I hide it so well!

More after the break.

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Do Jewish women call shopping “wholesale therapy”?

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Now how about faith

Don’t get me started on faith.

Oh wait,,, you didn’t.

Let’s start from the foremost and most obvious angle : I was raised without faith.

Religious or otherwise. Neither of my parents were interested in religion. My mother had experienced brutal treatment by Catholic nuns as a child, and my father’s father would have burst into flames if he ever entered a church, so neither of them were into it.

But what I don’t think many ex-religious parents understand is that their atheism will be radically different than their children’s because abandoning church dogma still leaves behind the structures and habits of belief religion gave them.

They can abandon what they have been taught of God and they can reject the existence of God as the frankly absurd lie that it is, but they cannot get rid of the God inside them that exists far below the conscious level and which therefore can support their mood without justification.

Their children won’t have that. I don’t have that. All I have is reality as revealed unto me by my amazing powers of reason and analysis, and the amount those show me is staggering but it is nowhere near enough and never will be.

Because it’s all merely information. It does nothing to support my mood. And unsupported things fall, as does my mood.

I could be fully omniscient and it would not help. I could pierce the veil of existence and see the truth beyond and behind all other truths so that all that is true is revealed, and it still wouldn’t make me feel better for long.

Because truth, revelation, enlightenment, and discovery are all fantastic but in the end they are just another drug. Yet another thing to be pursued because it makes you feel better for a little while but then the high fades and the search resumes.

Maybe that’s what keeps us truthseekers going. I don’t know.

Faith goes beyond religion though. There is what I can faith (or trust) in the universe and it is intimately entwined with one’s sense of safety.

My early childhood rape and subsequent bullying left me with a constant feeling of danger from a cold and hostile world that is actively trying to destroy me.

Obviously I don’t believe that consciously or rationally. I consider it to be hubris to the point of solipsism to think the world considers you worth fucking over, or even noticing.

But deep down it’s different. On the prerational level, I am terrified of everything and paranoid as fuck and in such a state of permanent full on panic that I can never truly rest, relax, or take down my guard.

Because that’s when they will GET me.

That’s what a total lack of faith does to a person. There has never been any person or force to protect me from any of the darkness and danger of the world.

And some people would be turned into a ferocious and furious warrior by this.

But me, I just gave up.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Can anyone teach me to feel love?

Because I don’t. At best I feel a little distant warmth, like sunshine on a bright winter’s day. It doesn’t come anywhere near penetrating the thick crystalline ice that accumulated around my fragile frozen heart through all these years of isolation.

I’m frozen because I’m isolated.
I’m isolated because I’m frozen.

Perhaps if I felt the love better, I would attract more of it because it would then motivate me to go seek more. Right now it doesn’t even feel like that’s a possibility. Like no matter which way I turn, there’s the same snowblind-bright eternal expanse of ice and snow and icicle-cold wind blowing through me.

Well at least it’s sunny tundra now. That feels like progress.

And the thing about this deadly chill is that it’s very easy to fall back into feeling like it means that nobody loves me and I am all alone in the world and will be forever,

Cry as I might, nobody is coming, because nobody cares.

If I can’t feel it, it’s not there. That is everybody’s default position.

But in my better, saner moments, I can remember that the love I want is out there whether I feel it or not.

Plenty of people love me, both online and real life, and the truth of that love is logically undeniable. Those who love me there beyond the ice-wall. I can’t reach them or feel their warmth but I know they are there, and I can see their smiles.

I assume they sometimes wish I was easier to reach.

I’m working on it.

I am trying to melt my way to freedom. I don’t deserve my icy prison. I am a kind, sweet, loving person who loves to use his big bag of magic tricks to make people happy.

I’m charming and funny and cute as all get out. I radiate the love I can’t feel myself in order to bask in its reflected glow.

It’s the only way I can feel it at all.

I deserve to truly feel the love I get from others. And I worry that my being distant and hard to reach despite how I act outwardly hurts the people I love.

I don’t mean to freeze people out. I hope people understand that. I love you all intensely but my terrified heart is holding me prisoner and I can’t let go yet.

I swear that I will be truly there for you one day.

But I have a lot of thawing out to do first.

---

Been feeling pretty depressed this afternoon.

Whatever. I won’t feel this way forever. It means nothing other than perhaps I need more sleep, or better sleep at least.

Or maybe it’s just part of getting better. Might be that in order to heal, I have to let myself feel that frozen sadness so it can thaw out.

As always, catharsis is the key to set you free.

More after the break,

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After a tragedy :

A : Everything happens for a reason…
Me : Well duh, that’s called “causality”.

---

Fun game : Take a text file of the Bible and replace every instance of “God” with “Ed”.

Think about it.

Ed got so mad about the wickedness of the world that he drowned every life form on Earth except for this one guy and his extended family.

Ed gave the Ten Commandments to Moses.

Ed wrote the Bible.

Ed created the universe.

Kinda changes things, dunnit?

What belief is for

We live in an era where millions of people (mostly Americans) are literally going to die for their beliefs.

They think Covid is a hoax and as we speak, they are dying in droves every day. People’s last breaths as they die of Covid are spend insisting that nobody gives them that evil Covid vaccine. Children and relatives are left watching helplessly as otherwise healthy people die a horrible choking, gasping, smothering death because a bastard whose name rhymes with Dump (not a coincidence) told them that he knew better than science what was good for them.

The stakes of belief, therefore, have never been higher. Somehow, this mad era has turned political belief from a matter of dinner table conversation and elections into a very real matter of life or death.

People are dying from believing the wrong thing. This is unprecedented.

So I think this is an excellent time to examine what belief is and what it is for.

Starting with the basics : all beliefs are fundamentally datum about the world.

Whether the belief is “water is wet”, “driving in a snow storm is dangerous” or “God loves me”, it still represents a fact about the world.

But not all beliefs are equally important. In fact, most of them have little impact on daily life. Thinking that the capital of Canada is Toronto is unlikely to have any impact on your life beyond embarrassment. Thinking the greatest President was Calvin Coolidge is pretty unlikely to cost you money.

Heck, thinking the Earth is flat is unlikely to wreck your life.

That’s one kind of belief. Non-personal. Inconsequential. Theoretical, even.

But then there’s the core set of practical beliefs about physical reality, and on these we have a broad level of consensus.

A belief that gravity is a myth is hardly sustainable.

And then there’s the vast middle ground of beliefs that have some consequence but are not as clear as whether or not fire burns you.

A lot of our beliefs about others fit here.

The point of all these beliefs is to provide us with an accurate picture of reality through which we can make successful decisions that lead to the desired effect and thus allow us to negotiate reality and thrive.

The problem with Covid is that a Type 1 belief of the political type has jumped the rails to become a Type 2 belief about fundamental reality.

It sometimes seems to me like this whole era was designed to test the limits of democracy, freedom of belief, and personal autonomy.

At some point, we will have to abrogate people’s freedoms in order to save their lives.

Either that, or just let people die like in the days of the Black Death.

Neither option is acceptable.

But soon we will have to choose anyhow.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.