Posted this to a YouTube thread about horrifying things that happened at school :

After finally snapping at my art class bully and throwing a desk at him, I was sitting in the teacher’s office getting a lecture when a dire thought hit me and I asked him if my bully was going to get a lecture too and he said, “Um…well I guess…. I mean, eventually… ” and I realized that he wasn’t going to lecture the bully because he was afraid of the bully and that’s why he was blaming the victim, namely me. And that’s how justice got inverted. How it had always worked for me. Shit flows downhill and there I was at the bottom. That’s why the teachers always sided with the bullies. Cowardice. That, and they secretly agreed with the bullies that weird and troublesome kids like me should be punished. For all I know, someone of them were former bullies themselves. And that’s when I was seized by the blackest rage, told him he was a coward and worthless and blaming the victim, and stormed out before I killed somebody,

me laying a truth bomb on youtube

The memory just spontaneously surfaced in response to the prompt and I knew I had to write it down.

So I put it in the thread, then I talked with my shrink about it, and now I am talking with you good and wholesome folk about it.

A lot in me died that day. For instance, the last vestiges of my faith in “the system”.

It was bad enough when it completely failed to protect me from my tormentors when I was in elementary school, forcing me to take justice into my own hands in junior high.

But if they were going to turn on me, the victim, because they lacked the courage to go after the admittedly scarier victimizer, fuck them,

So I withdrew even further into myself. In fact, that was probably the inciting incident for all of my high school depression.

And it got…. pretty bad. Closest I’ve come to suicide.

Could have been a lot worse, though. If that teacher had said or done one thing to challenge me instead of letting me stalk out the door, I would have hurt him bad.

Instead, I walked home from school thinking black thoughts.

Looking at it now, it’s a wonder I didn’t become some kind of libertarian neckbeard determined to protect my precious specialness from all the mindless feeders, or something equally monstrous and ridiculous.

Maybe that’s what would have happened if I had not already been so good at the hiding within yourself game.

Or if there had been some sort of oppositional force keeping me engaged. Some kind of opponent or protagonist to give me something to fight.

Because like I told Doc Costin, I have absolutely no problem sticking up for myself against any enemy.

In fact, I thrive on pushback.

But when there’s nothing to fight – when nobody will fight me – then I go back into my shell and fall deeper and deeper into myself till I forget what happy even smells like, and lo and behold, I am a Trog.

And there I will lay for the rest of my days.

Unless I do something to get myself out of his hole.

Aaaaaaaany day now.

More after the break.

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Let’s talk innocence

Another one from the “Oh god, not this again” file.

The thing is, innocence was never meant to be permanent.

As far as I can figure, innocence is a word we give to a sort of protective layer of consciousness that both nourishes and protects young minds as they grow.

It filters out or stores the ideas, emotions. concepts, and experiences the growing mind can’t handle like a cognitive immune system, and guides the child’s mental growth along a healthy developmental path, all under the radar so that the child remains unaware.

We miss our innocence when it goes because, having contiguity of consciousness. we can remember things seeming much simpler and easier. When comparing our current more complex and stressful mindsets to the mind we had before, we cannot help but conclude that life was better back then.

But this is an illusion. If you truly look back at your true memories of the time, you will recall that you weren’t any happier then because you had no real idea of what was coming and were too busy being nostalgic for an even earlier time anyhow.

But we don’t need to plunge into the murky world of memory and nostalgia to see this.

Tell me…. are you happy all the time now because you are free of the problems you will have in the future?

Of course not. How can you be glad to not have to deal with things you don’t even know exist yet? How can you enjoy still having what you never lost? How can you celebrate all the good things you have now?

After all, you didn’t celebrate them back then. And you’re not celebrating the ones you have now, either.

And trust me, some day you will be nostalgic for these precious moments you are having right now, and wishing you had appreciated them more at the time.

So get started already! Celebrate these moments right now, no matter how rotten they may seem, because one day, you will wish you had, but it will be too late.

These are the golden years. Because what makes years golden isn’t the time or the place or the era.

It’s the attitude. Things seemed better when you were young not just because of the shows on TV or the songs on the radio, but because you had a youthful, hopeful, open attitude towards life. You welcomed life with open arms and when life knocked you down, you cried, wiped your tears, then got right back up again.

And while your youth can never come back, the youthful attitude can. Stop looking backwards and face the future. Be the person you will wish you’d been. Be old but think young. And remember that no matter what you think of the future, it’s still the place you are gonna live, so you might as well get used to it.

In conclusion… um…. something about innocence?

Man, I never end up where I am trying to go!

Oh well, I always end up somewhere worth going, anyhow.

Damn could I make a mint as a motivational speaker.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

1072

And not the cute fluffy kind either.

It started when I decided to install this mod called Knights of the Nine : Revelation onto (into? over? through?) my Oblivion install.

It sounded pretty interesting, it was apparently beloved by thousands of fellow nerds, and it was an unofficial sequel to the Knights of the Nine official DLC. So I thought I would download it and give it a shot.

First problem was that I misread the instructions and headed to the wrong place entirely. Totally my fault but I still got panicky and frustrated before I figured it out.

Then things get going and I meet up with Sir Gareth^[1] and he says, “Hey let’s go find the thing”, then says, “I’ll follow you.”

But… you’re the one who knows where this thing is. You’re the one who told me about it in the first place. It is logically impossible for me to lead you to it.

So off I go to Google a solution. Nothing. Because when I have any kind of problem on the computer, it’s something no human ever has or will experience.

So I leave a panicky message on the Reddit group for Oblivion, then go back into the game and restart the quest, and this time I notice Sir Fucknuts telling me we have to go to some place whose name I forget so we’ll call it Nunkunt.

I noticed that the first game but didn’t make note of the title because I assumed that there would be a map marker to follow, like normal.

Nope! So now I technically know where to go, but no idea where it is. Lovely.

Back to the web. This time, with slightly different search terms, I manage to find a video walkthrough and get a general idea of where Nunkunt is located.

But it’s still not marked on my map so I have to go search all over that region to find this fucking place. Which is not fun.

Finally I find it and do a VERY boring dungeon except for the boss fight at the end and a couple of well executed traps.

After that, Gareth fucks off, so I guess I just… I dunno, run errands for a bit?

Then I laid down for a nap. Woke up 5 minutes from my 11 am wound care appointment. FUCK. Get ready, car’s battery is dead, so cab time.

End up not getting there till 11:40 am, which is way too late. They’ve moved on. Should have just phoned ahead to see if there was a chance. Wasted $20 on cabs.

Oh well, fuck it, some days are just like that.

Time to return to my hibernation capsule.

More after the break.

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“Underling, kill this man!
“With pleasure, sir!”
“No, use the gun. “

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Sewing for nuns is habit-forming.

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“Doctor, what about pneumocistitis?”
“It’s hard to say…. ”

The crushing tides

Depression’s been hitting me pretty hard.

Like tides of black water crashing into me from all directions over and over, crushing me in between them and leaving me broken and bloodied on the shores of…

..um… dammit, I had something for this….

…on the shores of…. um.. stuff.

Look, even I run out of metaphors sometimes.

Point is, I feel shitty. To the point that I don’t even want to get out of bed, and that is very rare for me.

Unlike other depressives, reluctance to get out of bed has never been a big factor in my depression. I could always get my ass to the computer without a fight at least.

But for the last couple of days it’s been a struggle, and I have to just lay there a while gathering my strength in order to do it.

Luckily, I still get sick of lying there and bored as hell eventually and that drives me from the comfort of my bed if nothing else will.

If that ever fails, you will know I am really sick.

Like, call 911 kind of sick because this is Not Good. I have hit a whole new level of crazy and the media must be alerted.

Oh, I forgot, I don’t matter and never will.

Well at least tell my shrink.

Then again, I am pretty sure I am also physically sick.

The malaise is there, as is a scratchy, hot feeling in my ears, throat, and lungs. I’ve had some random and fairly acute pains in my joints, especially in my left knee. I feel the beginning of chills coming on too.

Felt fine before I went to the health center today. I’m just sayin’.

I mean, I had my mask on (natch) but there’s all kinds of bugs besides Covid and some of them spread by contact so masks don’t do shit.

In order to get well you have to go hang around in a room full of sick people, and there is just no way about it.

Now, odds are, I will fight this ague off like I have fought off all the others that keep gaining a foothold and causing mild-ish symptoms before disappearing.

But I can’t help feeling like ones of these times, the forces of infection are going to get a lucky shot in and bam, there I am with pneumonia or worse again.

Dammit do I want that Covid booster ASAP.

I wish we could just get it from our pharmacists like I did my flu shot.

From a fresh faced sexy young Korean pharmacist. Didn’t even feel it go in.

The necessary joke

Oh well, whatever happens will happen. I will weather it somehow and come out the other side of it and things will go back to sucking a more reasonable amount.

And that’s something we can all looks forward to.

Or at least dread a little less than usual.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

This sleeping all day is getting to be a thing.

OK, calm down, me. We’ve been through these sleepy periods before. And yeah, they can be kind of a drag, but they end when I get caught up on REMs so I might as well just chill and ride it out and try not to get freaked out over it.

Besides, I’m kind of enjoying this one.

After all, it’s mostly been the pleasant kind of sleep. Sure, at the beginning, I woke up feeling crappy like I so often do (thanks sleep apnea!), but for the last few days I’ve woken up feeling fine.

Not exactly bouncing out of fully refreshed and ready to take on the day. But fine.

Still, like I always say during these periods, Os testículos do peixe-boi são alarmantes. 

Wait, no, that’s for something else.

What I always end up saying is that it gets on my nerves to lose so much of my day. Makes me feel like life is slipping away from me.

Which is ridiculous, because I am not sleeping a much larger total of hours. Maybe an extra hour or two. I’m just sleeping more of them at a time,

And that is an unalloyed boon. I need that kind of sleep. I have gone months and months without sleeping more than two hours in a row and that’s bad.

Means I am not getting those deep REM cycles that are so necessary for brain health. It’s a wonder I haven’t completely lost all mental coherence.

Then again, I have a lot of experience operating in this state. Sadly.

Time to make mental notes. Got to remember how much better I already feel and give some thought to how I got here and how I might get back from time to time.

Skip the frigging Diet Coke, for one.

Enough sleep. Physics!

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Who needs drugs?

When you can get high on SCIENCE!! Mua ha ha ha!

Behold, the wonders of our universe!

The muon one I only sorta grasp. Like, I get the basic idea, but there’s not a lot to talk about. There’s something off about the Standard Model. We’re testing for it.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

But holy shit, time crystals! They constantly shift state without using any energy!

I repeat : without using any fucking energy!

Screw you, entropy, we found a loophole!

Also that scientist looks exactly like this girl named Rana who used to work at that killer bakery across the street from VFS.

Can’t remember the name. Something to do with bread? It’s where good desserts go when they die, anyhow.

ANYhow, time crystals blow my mind.

But then there’s GIANT BUBBLES IN SPACE! Fifty thousand light years across! Full of hot gases! Holy shitake!

And of course, people were all pfff, giant space bubbles, riiiiiight, Japanese dude.

But they are totally real.

I wonder what the walls of the bubble are made of?

I vote marshmallow.

More after the break.

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Life is work

And work is not evil.

Effort is not the enemy.

Unlimited leisure is a myth.

And on the whole, you’d actually rather be doing things.

The science is clear that human being are at their happiest when they are fully engaged in meaningful effort towards a common goal.

“The Zone” is not a state of immobile bliss. It is a state of being busy using all your capabilities to the maximum extend possible without undue stress.

AKA working as hard as you can without it hurting you.

And we know this, because most peop[le would consider a job in which you do very little – say, staring at security monitors all day – to be a terrible job.

If it was all about minimizing effort, it would be a great job. But it ain’t.

Truly, the attitude that work is somehow the enemy should stay in the childhood where it originates. When we are kids. we all have the primal experience of going from unlimited play to being expected to do certain things.

First it’s chores, like cleaning up our toys or setting the table.

But then it’s school. Ba ba BAAAA. That’s where you first are expected to do things you don’t like for the entire day!

And what are you doing? SchoolWORK. ClassWORK. HomeWORK.

Clearly, work means being forced to do things you don’t want to do because they are not fun and have unfun things like grades and pressure attached.

And thus the table is set, with us on one side and the evil forces of school and work on and effort the other side.

But this is fundamentally wrong. Even as kids, this is obvious.

What do we do in the summer? We play, often in highly energetic ways. Even a bookish loner like me spent his summers riding his bike around and walk hither and yon.

More active kids ran all over the place and played team sports and went climbing or rode horses and did all kinds of other things that were, by all measures, a lot of work.

So you see, we all know that life is best when we are activity engaged. The question is, with what shall we be engaged?

Ideally, with things we enjoy. More specifically, with the things we find sufficiently inherently rewarding enough to make them worth doing for their own sake.

Nobody needs to be paid to eat a chocolate bar. Broadly speaking.

So ideally, we would only have to do things we enjoy.

But realistically, life is always going to involve doing stuff that is not fun. So you either :

A. refuse to do anything you don’t totally enjoy and have the sad, pathetic life that a non-millionaire has with that kind of attitude, or

B. grow up, get shit done, and then go BACK to having fun.

And above all – stop me if you’ve heard this one before – try to have fun no matter what you end up doing.

When you realist that you can make something that seems lame fun just with the right attitude and a willingness to dig a little, the world becomes a much more fun place.

And all you really had to do was have a little mental flexibility about what is” fun”!

That’s got to be worth it, right?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I um… don’t. Like, ever.

Part of the price I pay for being such a shy, timid, delicate creature. Even the thought of reaching out to contact someone makes me tremble and retract like the mimosa I am.

And I can describe the proximate causes in the usual way. Talk about how hard it is to imagine anyone actually wanting to hear from me. How I always feel like I will interrupting them with my entirely unwelcome and irritating intrusion into their far more important and meaningful life and I will undoubtedly come away from the experience feeling deep and abiding shame for ever having been so foolish as to think I had the right to force my repellent presence on anyone, let alone someone I like.

I swear, all that shit is packed away in my head, and plenty more besides, just waiting to spring into action and poison my mind at a moment’s notice.

Boiled down, I don’t reach out because I am sure – emotionally – that I will get hurt. The idea that someone will actually be truly and sincerely happy to see me can barely cross my mind as a theoretical let alone as something that can actually happen.

And I know that’s wrong. Lots of people love to hear from me. And why not? I am a lot of fun to be around. I’m a funny, sweet, unique individual with a genuinely gentle and sensitive soul and a brilliant, shiny mind as well as excellent conversational skills.

So really, I have no sensible reason to feel like I do.

But feel it I do.

So I never reach out to people, no matter how much I miss them or how much they might even miss ME (imagine that),

And if those people also have trouble reaching out to people, well then, shit just plain dies, and for no goddamned good reason.

And I am not necessarily as easy to approach as you (or I) might think. Sure, I am friendly and receptive… at first.

But then that goddamned worm turns and against my will, I start looking for the exit. But I keep my happy smiley face on, partially due to being in denial and/or conflict about wanting to escape a perfectly pleasant situation and partly as camouflage to cover my eventual dash to “freedom”.

And even before that, I can be hard to approach because I put off a strange combination of “friendly” and “fuck off” vibes.

Even for people who know me and know that I am a sweetie once I know you well enough to be calm around you, I can be hard to reach. Always off on my own little planet and on my own strange frequency, so you can never be sure you are truly getting through to me.

But I am going to get better. It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that I am a far happier person when I am being social and open and around people, and I want there to be more of that in my future.

And to hell with the Trog’s whining and clutching and hiding and scurrying away.

It knows nothing of the world and all its predictions are wrong, wrong, wrong.

When it says “don’t do that socially stimulating thing, we’ll be sad” it is WRONG.

When it says “hide from the light, it’s safe in the dark!”, it is WRONG.

When it says, “flee the warmth of human connection for it will melt us”, it is RIGHT…. but it’s wrong that it melting is a bad thing.

Melt away… and set me free.

More after the break.

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New workplace philosophy : Management Plus

All right, hear me out.

Problem : Management seems useless (or worse) to workers.

Workers looks at what their immediate level of management does all day and sees a lot of just sitting around doing next to nothing. They’re either just sitting there in their offices, or having useless meetings, or otherwise seemingly wasting time and doing nothing to earn their superior salaries, let alone anything to justify their authority.

Problem : Management tends to get up to “mischief”

Deep down, everyone in management know in their heart that they are, in fact, useless. The hard truth is that most of management is mostly useless most of the time, and only exists to make upper management feel more important by having more people between them and the worker.

See : the Yertle the Turtle Effect.

That means that everyone in middle management is desperate to justify their place in the food chain by any means necessary, and that leads them to meddle with things.

Brave new (stupid) policies, re-organizations, workflow analyses, and other harebrained scheme with no chance of working result because whether or not they work or are even a good idea in the first place is completely irrelevant,.

What matters is that people look like they are doing something to justify their existence.

These two problems are joined at the hip. Luckily, that means one solution fits both.

Introducing Management Plus, a system in which all worker-facing levels of management are assigned a secondary “worker” role to fulfill when their management role is not keeping them busy.

This should be a low status, low demand worker role so that the workers never feel like management is taking the “good” jobs and also so that said job can be dropped at a moment’s notice when their management duties call.

Anyone who objects that such work is “beneath” them should try unemployment.

Besides, if you absolutely cannot stand the thought of working as a cashier for a couple of hours here and there, you can always look for other actually useful things to do.

The point is to be visibly contributing. The payoff is better relationships with the workers as well as a marked decline in boredom for you.

And as a bonus, you will remain closer to what your workers actually do all day, which will lead to more effective policy decisions for everyone.

Most importantly from the lower management tier’s point of view, no matter when higher management looks in on you, you will be doing something productive, and therefore need never worry about inventing nonsense busywork in order to justify your bloated salary ever again.

And won’t that be nice?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Witness the power of a day without diet cola.

Because I have been sleeping all damned day.

Turns out I never needed a sleeping pill. I just needed to lay off the frigging caffeine for a day or two.

This is better, though, because the sleep is more relaxed and natural. Less of the feeling horrible when I wake up because I’ve been throttling in my sleep.

Turns out sleeping pills and obstructive sleep apnea are a bad mix. The pills make the throat relax even more, which only increases the obstruction.

No wonder I feel so horrid after taking them,

The fact that I did have a lil bit of alcohol with last night’s lovely Xmas dinner might also be a contributing factor, I suppose.

I’ve often considered the medicinal benefits of the old “glass of wine at bedtime”. Though knowing me, it would probably be a vodka and OJ instead.

But I am way too wary of becoming an alcoholic to risk it. I have the exact sort of escapist depressive personality that is prone to addiction.

Give me a way to escape my depression and I will be addicted to it in a heartbeat.

Besides, I’m already addicted to video games and overeating. My card is full.

Meh, I’m still frigging sleepy. I’m going to go right back to bed after I finish blogging. Hopefully that will give me enough energy to get through my weekly shopping and make it to Denny’s, where I can drink all the Diet Coke I need.

It’s good to have goals.

Had a nice enough Xmas. Dinner with Joe’s family last night was lovely as always. Had some naughty things, including the alcohol.

Diabetes and alcohol don’t mix well either.

Had some naughty dessert, including some Scottish shortbread. Heaven.

Picked up a bit of trivia too : turns out it was when a princess who had been raised in France ended up in Scotland (poor thing!) that Scottish shortbread got so good.

Turns out it was her trying to recreate the pastry from back home!

I’ve always thought Scottish shortbread tasted like French pastry, and it turned out there was a reason for that!

But honestly, what I enjoyed even more was just plain potato chips. God, how I have missed them! Along with all the other temptations of the snack aisle like cheesies and pretzels and tortilla chips.

But it’s all carbs, so it all had to go.

Ah well, at least I used my nutritional vacation well.

Meh, not easy to make the words happen when I am this tired. Feels like I am trying to ice skate uphill.

Makes me wish I had stopped at the 7-11 on the way home from Xmas dinner for a 2L bottle of Diet Coke, like I had planned.

But no, I was all “Nah, I don’t need it, what’s the worst that could happen?”

I guess now I know. And I suppose it’s not all THAT bad.

Just kind of a pain

More after the break.

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Hit total to exit

So with all this mind expanding stuff about the potential utility of hippie dippy bullshit and the power of believing in lies if they help floating around in my head, I feel like my mind is patiently but passionately trying to come to some kind of conclusion.

Something involving an exit from my repressive rationality in favour of a much more fun and flexible approach to life that handles the bumps, shocks, and counterpunches of life far better than my previous crusty “sensible” approach ever could.

A serious upgrade of my soul’s suspension system, essentially.

Because all attempts at stasis are futile. Running to stand still is the only way to get even the illusion of continuity. If you want to keep up with life, you have to roll with the punches and keep plodding along at speed.

There’s no future in trying to be an invulnerable statue that stays the same as the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune shatter harmlessly against its shiny surface.

Why? Erosion, motherfucker. The waves always win. They are eternal and I am just another rock on the water’s edge. Staying the same is impossible.

Renewal, however, is not. Living things regenerate. The only reason any of us are still here is because our bodies are constantly replacing what we lose. At our cores are factories producing fresh new vital cells that are slowly pushed up by the cells being made below until they too reach the surface and are shed.

Life, then, is a matter of constant growth and release. Even the oldest tree in the forest is not the same tree it was ten years ago.

Now where was I? Oh yeah.

The point of all that was to make the case for a more open and flexible approach to life. To being more alive, to put it another way.

And that means no longer being bound to the world of logic, rationality, and “the truth”.

Fuck the truth. What is truth next to happiness? Is being realistically miserable really better than being deludedly happy?

I used to think so but now I’m not so sure.

The theory was that only “the truth” was trustworthy, and therefore you were better off investing your emotions in truth’s solid ground than building castles in the air.

But it’s not that simple, is it?

Because once more. there are more than two options. It’s not just a matter of solid truth versus nebulous fantasy.

There can be lies that are “true enough” to be worth believing for the benefits you get.

There can be fake truths that seem rock solid but only because you’ve made large and largely unsupportable assumptions.

There can even be questions for which no solid answer is possible.

All in all, you are better off composing your own reality out of what phenomenological components you happen to have on hand.

I mean, that’s what everyone ends up doing in the end anyhow.

Might as well be honest about it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

OK, now stay with me, because this could be big.

I’ve had a revelation : maybe some things are worth believing purely for what said belief gives us, regardless of whether or not that belief is “true”.

Think about it. Grok this utilitarian equation :

If believing something makes you happy or happier, and believing it has no cost or at least very little cost, then cost benefit analysis says it is totally worth it.

Now obviously, we’re not talking beliefs like whether or not it hurts to get run over by a car or whether stabbing yourself in the throat with a corkscrew is a good idea.

But most beliefs aren’t like that.

Take thinking the Earth is flat. Completely ridiculous on every level and easily disproven by anyone with a pulse, right?

But what does believing it cost a person? Public ridicule? Say they keep it to themselves. What does it cost them then?

Nothing. It’s not like the true shape of the Earth has any impact on the actual decisions they make in their life. They can believe that the Earth is shaped like the Queen’s butt and it still will have no impact on their life.

So if believing it makes them happy, why the hell not?

And that scales all the way up, too. Why not religion? Pick one that suits you. If thinking an omnipotent and omniscient perfect father rules over all and watches over you personally with infinite love and forgiveness makes you a happier person, and doesn’t make you shoot anybody or eschew modern medicine. why the heck not?

“But it’s not TRUE!” insists our higher faculties. “Isn’t it wrong to believe things which are not true?”

In theory, yes. And we won’t even get into how bad things can get when the beliefs you have made a core part of your emotional support structures get disproven.

But in practice, some utterly bullshit beliefs might just be worth the relatively minor damage to one’s intellectual integrity.

Even the truly despicable ones like racial intolerance might work out in someone’s benefit given the right conditions.

In fact, the only real barrier that I can see is whether or not the belief is consistent with the other things the individual believes.

And even that is negotiable because it all depends on one’s level of metacognition. In other words, you have to be able to recognize the inconsistency before it bothers you, at least on a conscious level.

I figured out that people believe what they need to believe when I was just twelve year old. But this puts it into a much larger and more general context.

The main problem is that we don’t wall these special beliefs off from the more reasonable everyday beliefs, and so they enter the shared communal reality we all share via discussion and debate and then have to fend for themselves.

Europeans have the right idea when they treat religion as a very personal matter, and therefore not something you discuss with strangers.

Still – dragging myself back to the damned point yet again – this idea that it can be perfectly fine to believe something untrue in order to get the emotional benefits strikes me as a big frigging deal.

I wonder what I could believe in order to make myself happier?

More after the break.

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Electric rainbow wonderland

Lemme tell ya about something that happened to me recently.

I was in the twilit land between being awake and asleep the other night when suddenly, a song happened in my head.

That’s the best was I can describe the experience. It’s like the song just started playing and I started writing it in my head in much the same way I would write a joke or a speech or some exposition in my head, except I was writing it as it played

I was basically improvising it in my head, in realtime.

This has happened before but not often. And usually not at this length or level of detail.

Because I had a full first verse, most of the second and third, and three choruses with variations by the end, plus an ending spoken word part.

Sadly, I don’t remember any of it. Most of it got swept away with all the other cobwebs made of dreamstuff when I woke up.

But here’s what I do remember : it was an upbeat super happy starbursts and rainbows up with people late 60’s pop song just positively vibrating with positive energy.

And while I like that kind of music, it’s not very me. Or so I thought.

I hail from darker realms.

But when I was paging through the remaining remnants of the dream as I woke up, I found myself thinking, why the hell not?

Why not open my arms, my heart, and my mind to this bumper crop of good vibrations and let them shake the dust out of my speakers and crack that crusty old shell and maybe even move me to a much higher and groovier energy state, baby.

And holy shit I didn’t even know I had that in me.

I’ve always kind of looked down on that kind of thing. From my lofty pragmatist’s perch, I hmphed at such empty-headed mental masturbation and rolled my eyes at people trying to get, like, so very very far out, man.

Enjoy yourself, hippies. Maybe you’ll find something amazing and new out there. But no thanks, I will remain “earthbound”.

But now I am rethinking things. A lot of things. Maybe there is something for me in even this wacky colored place. Maybe I could learn a lot from this psychic cosmonauts and I should not be so quick to put them down and dismiss them.

Everyone you meet knows things you don’t know.

There is good to be found in even the most unlikely of places.

And maybe some of us just need to chill the fuck out, man. Hop channels till you find the right frequency for you then just sit on that sucker and vibe, man.

Stop thinking about finding what is true and start looking for what you need!

Get your emotional nutrition today, muchacho.

Reality can wait.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

And go fuck yourselves, every one!

Tiny tim

Not in the holly jolliest of moods.

Not sure why. But the fact that it’s Xmas Eve and I will be spending it all alone as usual and that’s pretty fucking depressing probably has something to do with it.

I’ve been trying to have some Xmas spirit. And I was doing OK at that until this afternoon. Woke up from a nap in a dark black cloud of roiling smoke and reeking of latent malevolence and nuclear grade crankiness.

Probably just as well that I won’t be around others for a while, then.

Because I feel extra crappy right now. and I might lash out if provoked.

Put a sign on my cage. CAUTION : Snarly fox. Do not approach without gingerbread.

I am sure this will pass, through. I might even attempt to do something radical to mark the occasion like… anything.

Usually I mostly just let the whole thing slide past me in a stunned state and then the moment it’s all over suddenly come back to life in time for the weeping and the wailing and the gnashing of the teeth as I beat myself up over all the awesome Xmas things that I could have done.

But that is totally bullshit.

Because no, I couldn’t have done those things.

If I could have, I would have. But my mental illness made them impossible. It clogs up everything, making it impossible for all but the meekest and weakest impulses to actually translate into action.

So sure, there are things I “could” do. Maybe take a cab to see a movie. Dune is still in the theatres. So are many other great things, I am sure.

Could even have a nice dinner out while I am out on the town. Do the dinner and a movie thing out at Riverport. Have dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory, where they make old spaghetti.

Sounds very nice. I can afford it easily, too.

But I just don’t have the energy/motivation/wherewithal/whatever.

Pasta sounds good, though, so I will probably order in some Meaty Marinara from Pizza Hut. Maybe some garlic bread too.

No dessert, though. They don’t have any “mild” desserts at Pizza Slut these days. Just stuff that would damn near kill me.

Besides, I am saving all my naughtiness points for dinner at Joe’s family home tomorrow night. I will arrive with a hearty appetite and LOTS of insulin so I can enjoy my one night a year of total indulgence without dying.

After all, if I die, I’ll have to stop eating!

So nah, no extra naughtiness for me. It’s bad enough that I will be eating all that carb laden pasta and garlic bread.

Probably a Caesar salad, though. Delicious and nutritious and putting down a layer of slow digesting cellulose (in the lettuce) should slow down the digestion of the pasta.

If only that was enough to make the Slut’s Big Cookie safe to eat. That thing is awesome. Especially with ice cream.

I better stop before I whip myself into a gluttonous frenzy.

More after the break.

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Gasping my last

Well I just about died.

Was eating supper – went for Indian instead of pasta. Had taken a big bite of curry (lamb of course) and was washing it down with a swig of my beloved diet cola when Something Went Wrong.

A bunch of bubbles decided they wanted to come up at the same time the food and diet cola were trying to go down and hence the diet cola got stuck in the middle and tried to choke me to death.

And as I was wheezing and gagging and choking and thinking I was about to die, all I could think about was that I was alone and there was no body around to hear my throttling sounds and either thump me on the back, do the Heimlich, or call 911.

So while my worst fear – asphyxiation – was happening, another big league contender – dying alone and helpless – was also in play.

This was all, obviously, super fucking scary. I thought I was going to die.

In retrospect, unlikely, as people general don’t choke to death on fluids very often^[1], but it was definitely a possibility.

I didn’t see my life flash before my eyes or anything. but that was probably because it’s very dull and this was not the right time to be bored.

I think I know how it all happened. Not only did that weird thing where bubbles trapped in the top of my neck suddenly – and painfully – happen, but the curry was also clearing out my sinuses so I had an unwholesome cascade of “nasal fluid” going down the back of my throat at the same time.

Plus, I was making the near-fatal mistake of actually feeling pretty good for a change, and was eating and drinking in a certain cavalierly multitasking fashion that has led to so many bad incidents in the past, especially when carbonation is involved.

Granted, those were all irritable bowel incidents and those are fairly unlikely to kill you – they just make you want to die.

So obviously, I am going to eat more slowly in the future and try not to inhale my food and that means being mindful of my eating instead of eating while doing a bunch of other shit and barely paying attention to my meal at all.

Not only is that dangerous, you’re also not even tasting your food properly.

And that’s a crime.

But in the longer term, I am seriously wondering if I should get myself one of those “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” buttons that dials 911 for me.

The next time, I might not be so lucky as to be able to clear the blockage myself.

The next time, in fact, it could be something far more serious and severe.

The kind of thing where seconds count and I might not be able to cry out for help, or it might be that nobody can hear me.

I am very, very scared.

I need some way to deal with this.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Or rather, heavy chest.

On today’s episode of Is Fru Coming Down With Something?, we have a congested chest that feels like I am trying to use my lugs to smuggle maple syrup.

Cold maple syrup. In February.

But ya know what? Fuck it. I can’t bring myself to care. Maybe I will get truly sick, but probably not. And I am so tired of these peekaboo symptoms.

Clearly, despite my undertreated diabetes, my immune system still works pretty good – maybe because of all the fruit I eat – and it kicks the ass of these bugs eventually.

Just takes it a bit longer.

I’ve also been feeling that signature malaise that accompanies being sick. I am feeling quite run down, apparently by a truck.

So I feel tired and sore and kind of depressed. And dragged down, like someone turned up the gravity around 10 percent.

I get the feeling a fair bit of sleep is in my near future.

Whatever. It’s not like I have anything productive to do.

I should probably work on that,.

---

Also had therapy today. Not a great session. It never is when I am sleepy.

Something about the therapeutic process requires my full wits.

Then again, what in my life doesn’t? I used my wits for everything.

I would probably be a happier person if I learned to turn minor tasks over to my instincts and reflexes instead of using the mighty muscle of my mind for every damned thing.

Assuming that’s possible.

I mean, this all started as my trying to overcome my extremely clumsiness through sheer force of will.

In elementary, I was extremely uncoordinated and clumsy. Could barely walk down a hallway without tripping over my own feet. Was always bumping into things. Running into walls. Things like that.

You would think that would be the sort of thing teachers and administrators would notice and say “My god, this child is clearly seriously impaired, we need to get him all the help he needs right away!”.

But that would have involved dealing with me so fuck it. Let him rot.

Serves him right for being such a little smartass.

Not that I’m bitter.

Anyhow, at one point, in grade 5 I think, I got quite frustrated with it all and taught myself to at least be marginally physically competent by concentrating really, really hard on what I was doing.

It’s like I had to produce super extra strong motor signals to overcome whatever it was in my brain that tended to randomize them,

And that’s been the system ever since. It uses up a lot of mental energy, and that’s not a big deal because I have an overabundance of that, but I can’t help but wonder what I could do if I got that brain power back.

Maybe I could even sustain a positive mood. Or sleep properly.

Then again, I already have way more brain than I know what to do with. Always have. More might just make things worse.

But I would be willing to give it a try.

More after the break.

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On how to vent

OK, time to tiptoe through another minefield.

The problem with which I am wrestling, naked and covered in olive oil, is the problem of what to do with all my anger.

And my bitterness, and my sadness, and all the other “hot” emotions.

It absolutely needs to come out. That much latent emotion is beyond toxic. The whole reason my inner emotional sphere is hot like Chernobyl on its worst day is because of all the latent emotion I have stored in there and I am only going to get better if I can find a way to vent the pressure and cool off.

Right now, the only solution for that is to keep doing what I have been doing, which is to “vent internally”, in other words, to take it out on myself.

That’s worse than no solution at all, obviously.

But the alternative so far has been to take it out on others. And while that would no doubt work – after all, it seems to work for millions of others – I do not consider it morally acceptable to make my life better by making other people’s lives worse.

But what if I can split the difference? Release the emotion internally but in a way that does not hurt me? Get the release without the self-destruction?

How? I am thinking by stripping the self-aimed malice from the sentiments and expressing them as pure emotions – as “I feel” statements and the like,.

Sounds pretty lame, I know. Like a lot of wimpy psychobabble regurgitated by empty headed rainbow drones who would pop like a soap bubble if they came in contact with real actual negative emotions.

And that’s not just me being crabby. If a solution is to work for me, it has to be able to deal with my kind of inner reality and that’s a harsh fucking realm.

Harsh like the surface of Venus.

So on the surface, “I feel” seems far too weak and flimsy to work.

But the basic concept is sound. There is no reason why expressing my deep dark emotions has to come at the expense of harming myself.

It’s just the only way I know. The only one I’ve used.

But I can imagine taking myself out of the equation. The only problem with that is that it’s going to come out pretty frigging crazy.

Because “I feel angry” ain’t gonna cut it.

“I feel like ripping the world in half with my mind” is a tad closer.

If these emotions are going to be released, they will be released with the full energy and strength of my incredibly powers of expression.

We’re talking Death Star level power and precision.

And that could get pretty scary. Might change how a lot of people see me. Not just silly fluffy Fruvous any more.

Well, this amusement park was always built on a volcano.

Only now it will show.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Out : calling them “anti-vax”.
In : calling them “pro-disease”.

Kind of clarifies things, doesn’t it? If you are against vaccination, then you are on Covid’s side and deserve to wear that around your neck like an effing albatross.

Imagine the fun questions you can ask these scumbags now :

“So, what made you side with a disease against humanity?”

“Tell us, what is it you like most about people dying drowning in their own phlegm unable to draw breath?”

“Why do you hate humans so much? Or…should I refer to them as Earthlings…?”

“Do you have a favorite variant? Wait…. it’s delta, right? Classic.”

“Do you also love Famine and War and Death?”

“Do you also have a plan to turn Smurfs into gold?”

“Does it turn you on when children die?”

The list goes on and on.

Because fuck these people. They’re the reason we’ve got Omicron ruining everyone’s holidays. Not that long ago, we thought we had Covid on the run, That we were done, that it was history, that fairly soon everything would be back to normal.

But no. Because of these ignorant Typhoid Mary’s, we all have to get a booster shot and social distancing and masks are back, baby.

And now immuno-compromised people like myself live in fear of catching a horrible death from a unwiped doorknob, too.

So fuck you. pro-diseasers. Fuck you straight to hell. The world is back to pre-vaccine levels of fear and it’s all because you filthy fuckers are scared of a little shot.

Speaking of which….

---

Got my flu shot after wound care today.

So, yay me! I got a thing done. Something smart and proactive and that I totally did not in any sense have to do, but chose to do.

That makes me feel like a grownup! #adulting #shutupboomers #stilltheirfault

Had to fill out a form. That surprised me, though I don’t know why. This shot is from the government, of course there’s paperwork.

It soothes them.

The pharmacist scored an ace with the shot because I didn’t feel a thing during the shot. Only felt a tiny sting after. So way to go, dude.

After that. we went to cash my check. It had been in my wallet for a couple of weeks and I felt it was time to get’r done.

No surprises at the credit union. Now carrying way too much cash.

Got to jump through the hoops to make my current credit card reloadable. That will also raise the limit it can carry from $500 to $1000.

But mostly it will keep me from having to buy a new one every month and a half or so when the $500 I put on the last one runs out.

Then I have to input the new one into all the places I buy stuff. It’s a hassle.

So figuring out how to make the damned thing reloadable is like, a hassle investment. Hassle now eliminates a much larger quantity of hassle later.

Join me for my TED talk on Hasslenomics this February.

More after the break.

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I’m not low maintenance

Nor should I be. Nor do I need to be.

I used to pride myself on being “low maintenance” and “easy to get along with” and other such things that basically translate into “low worth but low cost!”.

Because that’s what it boils down to, really. If you’re happy to be “easy”, odds are that it’s because deep down you don’t think you are worth much of an investment and so you better make yourself as “cheap” to get along with as possible.

And like a lot of things about low self esteem, it’s self-defeating in a way, because you are trying to make yourself more appealing but you’re actually sending the message that you are worthless and that, quite frankly, makes you gross to be around.

People with no self-respect are disgusting, not appealing.

Take it from one who knows.

And in another way, it’s self-reinforcing, because you are telling people to treat you badly, and they do.

Anyhow, back to my own case. (Stay personal, dammit!)

Furthermore, the truth is that I am not low maintenance and never have been,

Sure, I am not some pushy, volatile, moody, abusive princess from an anime, but knowing me means ignoring a lot of stuff about me in order to get my sunshine.

Mostly things that are related to self-neglect. Like body odor, bad breath, various skin issues, and other such stuff.

Like I’ve said before, I’m like a big dumb dirty dog in that way, friendly and waggy and cute as can be…. but also smelly and dirty and rather gassy.

So people like me but don’t necessarily want to get close to me in the real world.

There’s reasons for that but I shan’t go into them right now.

And that extends past the physical too. People don’t want to be around people with no self-respect either. It’s depressing,

One of the basic truths of human relationships is that people do not want to be around people they do not respect. That means you can’t go around advertising what a mess you are expecting to attract nurturing because you will not.

You will turn off most people and the ones you do attract will likely be abusive or crazy or both at the same time.

I am, of course, mostly talking to myself.

Jesus, I have wandered off into the theoretical again.

Back to the cost of knowing me.

It’s especially confusing with me because I send such mixed signals. On the one hand, I am charming and funny and super smart and those are positive things. The sorts of things that people are proud of. Things they admire in people.

But i also send out a lot of negative self-worth signals and can be kind of pathetic and there is always this undercurrent of panic and fear with me.

I’ve always had that strange duality to me. Amazing and pathetic in equal amounts. Drawing you in, yet also trying to escape. Trying to be close but also constantly escaping into intellectual abstraction.

Yup, I am not low maintenance at all.

Dang good thing I’m cute, then,

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

As patient readers know. for a long time I thought myself immune to the quest for the meaning of life (or my life, anyhow) mere because I saw through it.

I understood it. Knew where it came from. We seek this grand “meaning of life” because we are still basically tribal creatures who need someone or something to tell us what our job in the tribe is so we can do it and feel like we are doing what we are supposed to do.

A simple thing if you’re a hunter-gatherer. Relatively easy if you’re a villager and your father was the village smith as was his father and his father and so on.

But above that level and things get tricky. And once you get to the cosmic level of consciousness and start wondering about your role in the universe, forget about it.

See? I totally got this shit sussed. Check me, super genius guy, solving the meaning of life without even trying.

Except no, I didn’t.

I didn’t solve it, I just explained it. I didn’t provide any answers. Nobody is going away satisfied that they now know the purpose of their existence. I made nobody happier.

Least of all me.

All I really did was demonstrate how clever I am, and while that certainly is fun, and something I seem deeply driven to do, it solves nothing.

What it does is give me the feeling of mastery over the subject. Like by coming up with an explanation, I have asserted my dominance over the subject and therefore it is now my bitch and I don’t have to worry about it any more.

And that makes no sense whatsoever.

No logical sense, anyhow. It makes plenty of emotional sense, and reptile-brain sense.

But the problem still remains.

I still don’t know what I’m here for. I am plagued by a powerful sense that I am not doing what I am supposed to be doing and that in turn causes me a great deal of stress, self-loathing, and avoidant behaviour. It’s one of the big issues in my life.

Yet I went around for literal decades thinking I was somehow immune to the whole thing just because I had figured it all out.

Ah, such folly.

Like I’ve said before, part of the problem is the feeling of detachment. By summarizing and solving the question so precisely, neatly, and thoroughly, I gave myself the feeling of having detached from the problem and put it away in a neat little box.

But once again, I hadn’t actually solved anything. I just made myself feel better about it.

And I keep harping on this because I feel there’s something very important I am not quite seeing yet here. Something very deep and meaningful about how intellectualism operates and how it trips people like me up with these kinds of traps.

Oh well, I am sure I will figure it out sooner or later.

After all, I’m the guy who figured out the deal with the meaning of life.

So how hard could it be?

More after the break,

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I don’t like Tuesdays

Tell me why!

No really…. why?

For me, Tuesdays have always been my Mondays. They are my “worst day of the week’. On Monday, I still have some of the weekend’s momentum left and that makes things seem brighter and I don’t really think about the week ahead.

But then Tuesday morning hits and all that weekend feeling is gone and the four days till the next weekend seem like an eternity and life freaking sucks. ^[1]

And today’s been no exception. It’s kinda sucked too. Though not till near the end.

As far as I knew, as of when I went to bed last night, the plan for tonight was that we would take advantage of Joe’s being on Xmas vacation to go out to Denny’s tonight.

This would have made up for missing Denny’s last Sunday, for me at least.

So I sort of plotted my day assuming we would be heading out around 7:45 pm to meet Felicity at Denny’s at 8.

But then 8 pm rolls around, and I decide it’s time to stick my head out of my gopher hole and see what’s up.

Well it turns out that when Julian went to drive home after his dog walking job today, the car, she would not start. Poor dear had to bus home.

That must have been a most upsetting experience.

Without a working car, Denny’s was out, and the decision was made that Felicity would pick up Joe and give him a ride to his car and then a jump start at 10 pm.

Then, they would meet on Zoom at 11 pm and I would join them at midnight, which is what we usually do on Sundays.

I need the extra hour so I can blog and catch a nap.

Of course, nobody bothered telling ME any of this. I was only a knock on the door away, but once more, people just don’t want to deal with me, so I stay out of the loop.

But I get it. Joe says he was really depressed today, and I sure as hell know what that is like,. Depression can make even the smallest of tasks, like knocking on your fun but at times trying roomie’s door, seem impossible.

To top it all off, one of my precious few pairs of functional, can be worn in public without leading to my arrest pairs of jeans has come undone all along the upper inner left thigh.

My inseam came unseamed.

And for reasons I have explained here before, that kind of thing always sends me down a dark depressive spiral.

So yeah. Fuck Tuesdays. They are always the worst.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.