Got my Oblivion thing worked out and didn’t lose that much progress after all.

Turned out to be a problem with a mod I installed called Vampire Revolution that makes being a vampire in the game more convenient and fun.

Once I removed said mod, it stopped crashing.

I think it was conflicted with another mod, Necromancy and Lichdom.

So I wanted to be a vampire lich! Is that so wrong?

Apparently the answer is “yes”.

Oh well. I made it through the shitstorm, that’s the important thing, The badness occurred, I got depressed, I wanted to quit and start over, but instead, I stuck with it and overcame the obstacle instead.

Yay for me on that!

---

Today was Therapy Thursday. Not a great session ’cause I was tired.

Whether it was a legit tired or my subconscious mind pulling some bullshit to sabotage my attempts at self-treatment is impossible to say.

In fact, that’s the case in general. I honestly can’t tell when I am truly tired and when my Avoidant Personality Disorder is just making me feel that way so I can escape life.

Evidence for the latter is that I do often feel a sense of blessed release when I lay down for a nap.

Like phew, thank goodness, I can finally stop dealing with things.

And that’s no way to live.

I want to be stronger. I feel so weak. Like I lack the internal integrity to stand up to even the lightest of breezes and have to collapse and retreat before practically nothing at all.

It makes me feel like I am barely even here. And it doesn’t seem like it’s something I can simply grit my teeth and overcome via sheer force of will.

Which sucks because I’m good at that.

But no, this runs too deep for that. It’s the Wound and it causes me intense mental pain when I do the wrong things.

And by “the wrong things” I mean “practically everything”. Le sigh.

There has to be some way to get strong again.

---

Making my day worse is that I can’t find my antihistamines.

In fact, I haven’t had any in a couple of days, which means the effect has completely worn off by now and I am sneezing, sniffling, snotty mess. Gah.

THIS JUST IN : Found them. Apparently I put them with my “retired” meds for some reason. Just took one.

Reactine, take me away!

---

Funny how some ads just become a permanent part of your mental landscape, isn’t it?

That dumb ad is stuck in the minds of an entire generation, not just me, and it’s hard to say why. Some subtle oddness about how that famous line is delivered plus the universality of the desire to be “taken away”, I suppose.

Sometimes, a word or phrase (or meme) emerges that fits something so well that it just takes over via a kind of linguistic Darwinism.

This is especially true if the thing is new, or if the new phrase/meme/whatever puts something into words that has a lot of emotional resonance but had not been articulated well before then.

---

Wow, I forgot to finish this before wandering away

Luckily, I was over wordcount, so no real harm done.

Still, my mind has been wandering more than usual lately. I keep suddenly realizing that I haven’t hear the last 5 mins of the YouTube video I am listening to because my mind wandered on to a related subject, and that’s very unlike me.

And I wandered off without saying goodbye to any of my friends on Tapestries a couple of days ago, which is also quite unlike me.

The last goddamned thing I need right now is to become even more absentminded.

I mean, at some point, it becomes an actual handicap, right?

Guess what everybody, I’m mentally handicapped!

Please act surprised!

---

I suppose I wouldn’t be the first or last unbalanced genius.

There’s something to be said about the notion that we all get around the same amount of human potential and most people have their spread fairly evenly across their entire character sheet, with a few areas of specialization but no huge outlier abilities, just a general and reliable competence in most things.

But then there’s wacky type weirdos like me who have ALL out character points invested in a couple of categories, like say intellect and creativity in my case, and are way below average in everything else.

I imagine that if you dig around in the biographies of various outsized talents, you will find people who can attest to their general life incompetence.

And historically, there’s been people who “get” this, and are willing to take care of one of these exotic hothouse flowers in order that the world may know their talents.

And that’s not easy. Because we’re not stable. And that turns some of us into dicks.

Maybe even me some day. I mean, I’m a sweet guy with deep empathy and I truly care about people and have a deeply strict moral standard for myself, but that is no guarantee that I am immune to the forces that morally destroy the newly rich and famous, turning them into monsters.

The best I can say is that I am fully aware of the perils and that gives me more a saving roll against that shit than a wide-eyed innocent who expects fame and wealth to be nothing but wonderful forever.

Sorry kid. Life ain’t that kind. The best candy in the world still rots your teeth.

I picture myself being the trying sort of spoiled celebrity who would suddenly realize he’s been a dick to someone and immediately need to gushingly apologize to said person whether they even remember the incident or not.

Better than being an arrogant anus who never apologizes for anything, I guess, but I can imagine it being somewhat exhausting to be around.

I’m basically imagining myself being Dudley more as Arthur from Arthur.

Only with a ton of under-regulated and embarrassingly public homoeroticism.

OK, this is starting to sound pretty damned good.

Bring me wealth and fame, quick!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Still got that cold. If anything, it might be a little worse.

And I know what that means : if it’s still here tomorrow, Thursday. I gotta call Doctor Chao and book an appointment to talk to him about it. Dammit.

Technically, I should do that today, because the rule for us diabetics is “anything that lasts more then 48 hours”, but I am feeling lazy (and real tired for some reason) so I am going to give my immune system another day to work on it.

Meanwhile, I am getting plenty of rest and fluids and taking it easy.

So, business as usual, really.

I’ve occasionally wondered if there was some relationship between living like an invalid and feeling like an invalid, and if said relationship could be reversed so that living as though I am healthier than I feel actually makes me feel healthier.

It’s not entirely implausible. One’s attitude towards life counts for a lot. And that’s not just pep talk. That’s science. People with more positive outlooks on life live longer, have better health outcomes, longer relationships, recover from negative events faster, and in general just plain have it better.

And they do it JUST TO ANNOY ME! Bastards.

Just kidding. That’s what my cranky, negative, Lou Grant curmudgeonly side would say. And while I kind of like that side of me, he’s never going to be in the driver’s seat.

Because while that kind of negativity and bitterness can be highly amusing and great catharsis now and then, it’s no way to live.

What I want is a ruggedly optimistic attitude towards life. Pragmatically positive, without any denial but with all the positive spin on things I can muster.

Because there’s always more than one way to interpret things and there is absolutely nothing wrong with always picking the most positive, life-affirming choice amongst all the equally realistic options.

Now if I can only get myself to believe that on an emotional level. It’s a considerable challenge because it involves overcoming decades of negative spin in my mind.

And more importantly, the self-tormenting impacted rage that fuels said spin.

I am constantly hurting myself on the inside. Just stabbing and twisting the knife over and over and over again, and chewing myself up like a dog with bone,

And that shit has to stop before I stand any chance of truly getting better. Right now, I say I don’t know how to stop, but I say that knowing that eventually that statement will be revealed to be ignorant when I realize, Zen style, that I have always known exactly how to stop and it’s the easiest thing in the world to do.

That, too, will be BS. It’s very easy to fool yourself into thinking that you should have just crossed the finish line at the beginning of the race and saved yourself a lot of time and effort, but the real world takes actual work, not just cleverness.

Which is another wise lesson I want to somehow pound through my thick wall of emotional callouses so I can make myself truly believe.

I know so much more than I feel. So much more.

I want to be wise on the inside, dammit.

More after the break.

---

Fate’s Fuckery, Oblivious Edition

Now I’m in a seriously pissy mood because my Oblivion is fucking up.

Crashing, that is. And not a nice polite CTD^[1], either. Those suck, but meh, you load the game against and continue.

No, these are full on system crashes from which rebooting is the only escape. Which means I have rebooted 6 times in the last hour, or so.

That is super fucking frustrating.

But it’s partly my fault. I keep trying to get the same two saves to work when they are clearly fuck’d. But such is my aversion to loss that I keep trying to make them work anyhow so that I won’t lose progress in the game.

Instead I lose precious time waiting for my computer to reboot over and over again.

Well that’s progress for ya.

What I am going to have to do is just keep going through saves in reverse chronological order, newest to oldest, till I find one that works.

And then continue the game from THERE, as much as that will suck. All that precious progress, gone forever! ALAS!

Honestly, part of me – a not very sane part – would rather just start a new character. That would be a lot less painful because I wouldn’t feel like I had lost anything.

By any rational assessment, that’s just plain dumb. Better to get SOME of my progress back than have to start over at Square 1, right?

But what the hell. I’m not always rational. Knowing the “logical” choice doesn’t obligate me to do it, especially when it doesn’t take my emotions into account

Being a dedicated hardcore pragmatist, I firmly believe that it is logically impossible for the correct method to produce an incorrect or undesirable result.

Ergo, if doing something the “logical” way makes me feel worse or otherwise completely fails to meet my needs, it was the wrong way to do it by definition, no matter how “logical” it was.

Something can contain no errors in logic and still be wrong.

Try that one on the next race of hyper-logical robot aliens you encounter.

And it would not be the first time I started over rather then deal with a game’s bullshit. I’ve done it many times before.

It’s particularly effective at renewing my enthusiasm for a game I’m burning out on. And the great part is that the earlier parts of the game are now way easier with what you know now. You can zoom right through them.

Maybe even make better choices this time.

So it’s not as crazy as it sounds.

But in this case, I will try to do the rational thing and start from the most recent save game that works. See if I can live with that. Maybe do something random and crazy just to shake things up. Like install the slave trading mod and become a slaver!

What the hell, it’s just pixels.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Feeling pretty crappy today.

Mostly because I have a chest cold of some sort. Been coughing now and then, not a lot, and my throat is sore and swollen, and my nose is running, and my lungs are sore and scratchy and kinda raw feeling.

So, the usual, really. The same shit that keeps coming back now and then before disappearing in a day or so to lurk some more.

It’s also making me quite tired. Fighting infections takes a lot of energy, after all.

This caused me to miss my Wound Care appointment this morning. Slept right through. Had to call them up and offer my mea culpas. Next appointment is Saturday at 8:30 am.

Though with symptoms like mine, even if I had woken up on time, I probably would not have gone in. What would the point me? As soon as they asked the corona screening questions they would have sent me home anyhow.

That ended saving me money, at least. Would have been one of those mornings where I had to get there n’ back on my own, via taxi. Julian was busy dogsitting.

No big deal, really. Ten bucks each way, twenty total. I can handle that. But it’s nice not to have to spend it and even nicer not to have to pull myself together and like, interact with normal reality enough to call and take cabs.

For me, that takes effort.

But I am very pissed off that I keep missing Wound Care appointments. I have missed three in the last month and that is very unlike me.

I’m not a flake, god damn it. I’m punctual and reliable. Life just keeps fucking with me!

I’ve also been feeling quite depressed. Not that I care.

It’s just the usual bullshit. Feeling low, all dragged out and bogged down. Everything seems to take so much effort. Like someone turned up the gravity.

And the air viscosity, which is a phrase I instantly regret coining.

But I don’t care that I am depressed. It doesn’t mean anything. Nothing has changed. I am still the same awesome and amazing person with mental superpowers and a whole world out ahead of him to explore and conquer once he’s well again.

I might feel like shit, but that doesn’t mean I AM shit.

I’m just an amazing person in a shitty place right now. This too shall pass. I haven’t always felt this way and I won’t always feel this way,

It’s just the stupid fucking weather.

In the meantime, I guess I will sleep a bunch. Whatever. I probably need it anyhow.

Oh, got a call from Doctor Teal’s office. The stroke prevention dude. He wants to see me in a month. Left a voicemail. I still need to write down the details from it.

I figure that CAT scan couldn’t have revealed anything too dire if they are willing to wait a month to see me.

I was worried the message would be more like, “Dear Michael’s next of kin… we’re not sure how to put this…. but have you seen Scanners?”.

Well that’s it from me for now. Time to go back to sleep.

God I hate having to sleep all the time.

More after the break.

---

A fluid sense of self

As patient readers know, I’m a shapeshifter.

At least, that’s how I currently describe my flexible sense of self. It can assume any number of metaphorical shapes given the needs of the moment, but that comes with the drawback of very little in the way of long term stability and resilience.

The cost of being able to be anything is that it requires being nothing most of the time.

I’m working on that.

After all, I could have BEEN somebody by now!

What occurred to me today is how hard it is for me to imagine having a fully fixed sense of self. A rigid and inflexible sense of self where you are one well defined thing forever.

That just seems so weird to me.

Adaptation is my primary way of handling things. And it is central to all my fabulous superpowers. Being able to look at the lock and become the key is key to everything I do, and I have a hard time imagining myself doing anything else.

But I know that’s how most people live. Most people don’t have Mars in Pisces^[1], they don’t flow into a new shape to deal with things. They develop their sense of self and that is it and they have to learn to deal with life that way.

So it must be a matter of moving into positions where your pre-existing shape works rather than adapting to the situation. That requires a great deal of the exact sort of long term thinking I have only ever excelled at theoretically.

Presumably that’s where instincts come in. Through acting on one’s gut feelings, one gets deep input as to what works and what does not and it is this deep sense of how things work, not that slowpoke the rational mind, that guides them.

Seems like a lot less work than my cerebral bullshit. But I bet I’m better at crosswords.

And all because they never decided that they knew better than those voices nature put in our heads for a reason.

Those voices I decided must be wrong because they didn’t “make sense”.

I never even entertained the idea that maybe they knew something that my cocksure rational mind did not.

I mean, how could they? Emotions don’t know anything! Right?

I have been such an idiot.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Have I mentioned lately how I love this modern era, despite all the craziness?

Why? For reasons like this :

Having gotten myself another disposable (?) credit card last night, I was finally able to buy myself a new pair of glasses online.

Funny how it took me months to put together the fact that I had my prescription from my last eye exam with the fact that you can buy glasses quite cheaply online and come to the conclusion, “Hey, I should buy myself glasses online so I can see again!”.

Sometimes, ya got a 2 in each hand but it doesn’t occur to you to put them together to make 4 for an embarrassingly long time.

I am a confounding and confusing confluence of genius and derp.

I had tried to buy glasses online once before, around a month and change ago. but the website rejected my credit card. Motherfuckers.

This place, with the hilariously literal name “smartbuyglasses.ca“, had no problem with it. In fact, the whole process was pleasant and smooth.

And their website design was very “easy on the eyes” too, ha ha.

They even had a very clever way to get your “PD” value, which is the distance between your eyes. They get you to take any modern magnetic-stripe type card, like a credit card or debit card or membership card or whatever, and press it to your forehead over your eyebrow, then take a picture of yourself.

This works because all those cards have the exact same dimensions and therefore work as an excellent reference point for other measurements.

Like the website is saying, “OK, if the card is this apparent width, and the distance between the eyes is this apparent width, then…. ”

All told, my new glasses cost me $83, and that INCLUDES new frames and a modern blue-blocking lens coating that is supposed to cut way down on eye strain from looking at screens all day.

Sounds fab to me. And way better than the ~$230 those clip artists at IRIS charged me for my previous pair.

But my next purchase was even more astounding.

See, it occurred to me that a Gordian Knot type solution to my problems with my blood glucometer from those cheap fucks at Dexcom was to buy my own damned sensors for the one that actually worked, my Freestyle Libre.

So I decided there would be no harm in seeing what they cost online.

After all, in a world where I can get a pair of glasses online for $83, anything is possible, including a reasonable price for those sensors.

So I plug “freestyle libre sensors” into Google and it pops out of line of ads with prices and I see one that says $18.50 and think, “Awesome, that is way better than the $100 per the pharmacy charges!”.

So I click on the ad and it takes me to an Amazon page where I see something that boggles my mind twice :

It says that is the price for….. a box of 55???????

That can’t be right. And yet, that’s what the Amazon page says.

So I ordered it. I mean, it’s a $20 bet, so even if they turn out to be crap or I somehow misinterpreted things, all I am out is $20.

But if it’s as good as it claims to be, that’s 110 weeks of sensors for $20!

That’s 18 cents a week! 2.6 cents a day!

I think I can swing that, yeah.

They arrive this Thursday and I can hardly wait.

More after the break.

---

The real me

Day by day, I get to know him better.

This is necessary because this person I’ve been for my entire adult life, amazing and beloved as he is, is not the real me.

It’s the sick me. The crazy me. The me I managed to salvage after my nervous breakdown in my early 20’s, after my parents took me out of university.

This is the “failure to launch” version of Michael J. Bertrand. He’s very sweet and really funny and he has an offbeat kind of charm, but he’s broken.

Terribly, terribly broken.

He never got to grow up, and it shows. He’s lived his entire adult life hiding in the shadows from the world, only daring to emerge into the light of other people’s awareness when hiding behind a persona he created or at the very least a username he chose at some point.

And that is not the real me. Not by a long shot.

The real me is positive, optimistic, enthusiastic, outgoing, gregarious, full of life, and ready to take on the world or at least go down swingin’.

And then get right back up again because this overflowing cup of a spirit of mine would be put to good use shoring me up instead of just making me anxious.

The real me loves life, loves people, and loves shining like a freshly polished diamond with warmth and light and hope for all to see and share.

The real me sees life as something to enjoy, not endure, and he eats it all up in huge loving spoonfuls because he just can’t get enough of being alive and thriving.

The real me is truly and sincerely emotionally open, instead of just sort of faking it and hiding his sealed off status in the many layers of his complex personality. He connects with people effortlessly and can make total strangers feel like he’s their best friend that they have known all their lives. Everywhere he goes, he spreads the love.

But by far the best thing about the real me is that he can handle reality. The real world doesn’t overwhelm him with its loudness and intensity because he has the strength, resilience, and courage to deal with it all.

Challenges inspire him. Obstacles invigorate him. Rivals thrill him.

And he uses his power over others without shame or restraint because he knows he’s using his powers for good.

And money. But mostly good.

All in all, he’s one heck of a guy.

I hope to meet him some day soon.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

It all started with this. Of course.

I heard it coming from Joe’s room and it reminded me of a time that I tried explaining to someone (possibly Felicity) what that line, “I am the maker of rules”, means.

And ended up not doing a great job because it turns out it’s really hard to explain.

And yet, the song is something I “get” on such a deep level that the first time I heard the song as a kid it immediately burned into my mind like a holy vision. Before I could say I even understood the lyrics consciously, I understood them on that deep and mysterious intuitive level that has always had a lot of power over my mind precisely because it’s so unlike my usual, logical mind.

Well I’m 40 years older than when I first heard the song and at least seventeen years more grown up, and so i am going to take a crack at that explanation.

So : what does the song (and me) mean when we say “I am the maker of rules”?

Because that’s a pretty mysterious statement.

The way I see it is this : most people just follow the rules without even understanding that they are doing it. To them, the rules ARE reality, even the fairly arbitrary social rules. This allows them to navigate the complexities of human reality with the deft surefootedness of a mountain goat, but also binds them to it.

Let’s call them The People.

Then there are those who fight the rules. The rebels, the troublemakers, the disturbers of shit. They perceive the rules intuitively but not clearly, and fight them without ever truly getting a clear picture of them or understanding their nature.

We’ll call them The Resistance.

Then there are those who understand rules and their nature and use that knowledge to manipulate the more ephemeral aspects of human reality to their own advantage and/or amusement. The sufficiently adept can do this so well that it can make them seem magical to The People and The Resistance.

But there is yet another level above them, and it the truly masters of reality who have the strength and vision to ask : but where did the rules come from?

How did they get there? Why are they what they are? How is it they can bind others? What gives them their power? And ultimate, HOW ARE THEY MADE?

Once you can answer these questions, you have ultimate power. You can change the very rules of reality, eliminating rules you dislike and making new ones that others will follow, fight, or use.

This is the power of the deep mystic who has transcended whatever mystic tradition they followed in other to pull back the veil and see reality for what it truly is.

It’s the power of the power behind the throne, the eminence grise whose machinations span generations and who wrote the very script for your life many years before you were even born.

It’s the power of the spiritual leader whose wisdom and understanding lets them bring people together under a vision so strong and compelling that it sweeps whole nations with it like a rushing tide.

And yes, it’s the power to read your mind and cheat you blind. For those who have this power, that’s a trivial challenge.

And most importantly, it’s the power that I yield. I have always seen through the rules and understood where they come from and how limited and often voluntary they are. And I have always felt free to ignore them and substitute my own when I see fit.

Now do you see why I obsess over my power sometimes?

That’s what happens when you were born a god.

Sometimes I wish I was a mere mortal.

But I suppose I should concentrate on being the best god I can be.

Take responsibility for my destiny.

But that’s scary and hard!

More after the break.

---

Fun new science word

The word is KUGELBLITZ.

It means “a black hole formed from radiation instead of matter”.

It’s entirely theoretical but it’s a fun thing to ponder and even more fun to say.

In fact, I want it to become new slang for something really big and amazing.

I’m telling you, that night the club was a total kugelblitz!

Like it’s the positive form of “clusterfuck”.

So uh… work on that, everybody!

Gay german pig voice : OK, yah, now I am Kugen, and zhis ist Blitzen, and ve’ere here to turn zhis party into a total…. epic…. KUGENBLITZ!

---

Along came a….

CONTENT WARNING : The following is rated NOT SAFE FOR ARACHNAPOBIA

So as I was getting ready to go out to do the shopping and hanging with my friends at Denny’s thang that is the highlight of my week, I grabbed a towel off the rack in my en suite and this HUGE black spider fell out and landed on the front of my shoulder.

And I went AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! and the spider presumably also went
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! but in Spider and it fell off my shoulder and onto the ground where it scurried away under the vanity.

And I laughed. Because to me, that was hilarious. Such a perfect comedy beat, and my reaction was so spontaneous and real. I had to love it.

I treasure these moments in which I am perfectly human.

They are rare and precious to me.

And it felt good and right to laugh the tension away. That’s how I want to go through life, laughing at the bad stuff that’s trying to bring me down and using that laughter as life’s shock absorbed that let me bounce back no matter what.

To me, that’s the right way to live. And I feel like I have all the ingredients to live that way. I just need to build a good strong framework to install them into.

I will add that to the solid, substantial, emotional reasons to strive to get healthy.

Fuck nebulous things like long term health benefits and being “smart”.

Concentrate on the uncomplicated power of REWARDS.

Rewards like feeling better. Being able to do more. Feeling more comfortable in my healthier body. Feeling strong and durable instead of weak and frail.

And being horny as FUCK and actually able to DO something about it because now I have both the strong health body and the confidence to GO GET ME SOME.

Hell, even being able to eat the occasional naughty treat because my newly muscular body can use up all that excess blood sugar before it even becomes a problem.

That all sounds good for me.

Now I just have to fight the tide uphill to get over myself.

I’m working on it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Time for my obsessional confessional again.

I know I am absolutely failing my Taking Care of Myself course, and the penalties for flunking it are a lot worse than losing a scholarship.

And I want that to motivate me to do better, A hell of a LOT better. But the impulses to do that still can’t get through all my numb, dead scar tissue.

One might as well be trying to jump-start the heart of a mannequin. Or applying the defibrillator paddles to a half-frozen side of beef.

When I went to see Doctor Teal at the Stroke Prevention Clinic, as is customary at any new medical office, I had to fill out an intake survey.

Why in this day and age these people can’t just get together and keep a database of people’s answers and pull the info from THAT is beyond me.

I mean, how many offices need to separately verify that I have no known drug allergies?

Anyhow, on that form was an entry asking me which of the following vascular risk factors I had, and I had most of them,

Diabetes? Yup. Raging out of control and killing me softly with its glucose as we speak.

High blood pressure? Uh-huh. On two meds for it and it’s still a bit high. Gee, maybe I should stop putting so much salt on stuff. Naaaaaah.

Sleep apnea? You betcha. Also raging out of control. And completely untreated. My CPAP machine lies there once more gathering dusts because I tried to put on the new mask, couldn’t figure it out, got frustrated, and gave up forever without telling anyone or doing anything to try to fix the situation.

That’s so me.

Sedentary lifestyle? Oh hell yeah. The only people who get less exercise than me are bedridden and/or in a coma.

And that will be me soon enough if I don’t shape the fuck up.

And finally…. depression? Depression is a risk factor for stroke?

That’s so depressing!

But sure, why not, pile the fuck on. I’m worthless and pathetic anyhow so what goddamned difference does it make.

That there is the winning attitude that got me where I am today.

So like I have (more or less) said before, it’s basically a race to see if I can overcome my mental illness in time to treat my many, any physical illness before they kill me, or worse, leave me crippled and drooling with the IQ of refrigerator mold.

This latest incident (numb hand and face) has at least put some fear into me, and that fear has led to some action.

My head WAS in a CAT scanner on Friday, after all. (BTW, the cat says hi. )

But it’s nowhere near enough. I need to get my diabetes and sleep apnea under control ASAP or it’s the living grave of being bedridden and full of tubes for me.

Imagine being too sick to even play video games.

I would be seriously suicidal.

So if I want to save my current pathetic lifestyle, I am going to have to actually do stuff.

And that means overcoming the sick, septic part of me that wants to die, or at least get sick enough to have all responsibility for myself taken away from me.

And I try. And I try.

But it’s so damned hard,.

More after the break,

---

Power makes you a shark

As does size.

Been habitually pondering my relationship with my power advantage over others and my general unwillingness to use it.

I don’t want to be a giant, towering over others. My greatest wish is to live in simple harmony with everyone. Just me and the people, no superiority, no dominance, no walls between people, no unnecessary rules or restrictions, and no hate.

Just people living in peace, love, and harmony together, day by day, heartbreak by heartbreak, sharing life.

My god I’m such a hippie at heart.

But like…. a 70’s hippie. Victims of the post-60’s crash. People who have left behind the tie-dye and psychedelia in favour of just trying to really be there for each other, man.

A Burton Cummings hippie.

Anyhow, back to the point. Where was I?

Oh right. I don’t want to be a giant.

But I am, and denying it does me no good. No matter how I crouch, I still tower over others, and honestly I am not fooling anyone, not even myself.

And what really wears someone like me down is the constant restraint.

I have to be so careful not to hurt all the little people around me. I know that I could crush dozens with one wrong move. So I am always as careful as I can be,.

Hence the grumblings of my id, that wants me to say to hell with these pygmies and do whatever the fuck I want and if they know what’s good for them, they will stay out of my way or get steamrolled.

Or to put it another way :

Only I am also hyper-intelligent, extremely sensitive, highly charismatic, cute and lovable, and a really nice guy too.

It’s almost embarrassing.

I also could have added “massively talented” and “dangerously clever”, but I didn’t want to seem immodest.

Thing is, I know all this about myself and yet it’s still a struggle not to hate myself and attack myself with the fury of a wounded harpy.

I guess that proves that my self-loathing is not based on any kind of rational self-assessment. Rationally, I’m an amazing, one of a kind wonder worker.

So the self-loathing is merely anger inwardly expressed, and means absolutely nothing about what I am actually worth.

I’m worth a million in cash and prizes, baby.

I’ve just been stuck behind this logjam of the mind for a long long time.

I don’t want it.

I don’t deserve it.

And I don’t plan on putting up with it for very much longer.

Pretty soon I am going to come busting out of this stupid little cell.

I just have to convince more of my mind that we want that.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

–>

I told Doc Costin (for it is Therapy Thursday) how I had been feeling restless and anxious lately and how just noticing the passage of time would freak me out.

As in, “It’s Tuesday already? AAAAAAAAAH!”

But after yesterday’s adventures in life’s great pageant of fuckery and the time it took to calm back down and for my legs to stop hurting, all that agitation was gone.

Or at least faded to a safe background level.

So remember : exercise, strain, change, movement, and stress are my friends. They make the bad stuff go away. That’s a gooood thing.

Repeat until believed.

More after the break.

---

How to stop beating yourself up

Boy would I like to know.

But it always comes back to the same sticking point : it’s take it out on myself or take it out on others and taking it out on others is morally unacceptable to me.

That’s what my Dad (RIP) did and it poisoned my childhood. No thanks.

But wait, this is another of depression’s false binaries. Who says anyone has to get beat up? The aggression is just a symptom of frustrated energies screaming to be released.

I mean sure, I have a lot of pain inside as well. Hurt that has gone unprocessed for a very long time. I got massive underground silos full of that shit.

But expressing that doesn’t necessarily require a victim either. That’s some seriously broken zero some thinking. It can be expressed abstractly, say through my writing, or through some sort of aggression adjacent physical activity like martial arts.

Well okay. I’m 48 and frail as fuck. So maybe not martial arts. Not in the “contact sport” sense, that’s for sure.

And my reflexes are way too slow for eSports. Hmmmm.

That just leaves arguing with people on Reddit.

There are worse hobbies. Presumably.

My point{{2}} is that there are healthy, morally acceptable ways for me to wring all those toxic repressed emotions out of this sorry sack of protoplasm I call my body and that I should never believe my emotions when they tell me that I am trapped, that I have no choice, or that there’s no way out.

There’s always another choice if you can free your mind to see it.

Get this big bad brain of mine busy working for my benefit for a change instead of coming up with new ways to undermine my efforts in order to maintain the status quo.

Because the status quo sucks.

Fuck stability, predictability, and the illusion of control. They are quite literally killing me. It’s going to take walking through troubled lands to get to my happy place and that is going to take forsaking the safety of my impoverished homeland to face the big bad world and seek what I need from it.

After all, it’s not like it’s looking for ME.

Or if it is, it’s really bad at it.

I’m right here, for fuck’s sake!

This is all starting to sound like the classic hero’s journey adventure story, isn’t it? I have to leave my comfort zone to see the one thing that can save me and my people from the horrible monster that has been terrorizing us for so long.

A monster…. called Depression! *dramatic musical sting!* *evil laughter*

Alright, that’s enough blogging for me for now. Time to rest.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

[[1]] Hey look everybody, it’s the point! Good to see you, buddy! Long time no see! [[1]]

[[2]] Wait, I have a point? Go figure. Look, I’m as surprised as you are! [[2]]

Well today has been fun.

Today I had an appointment at the Stroke Prevention Clinic on the 8th floor of the Gordon and Leslie Diamond Building, across the street from VGH.

So Julian drove me there this morning, darling man that he is. The official parking structure was full, so Julian just dropped me off at the front entrance with the understanding that I would call him when I was done.

This becomes very important soon. Pay attention, there will be a quiz.

So the appointment went fine. My doctor’s name is Doctor Teal, which secretly delighted me. Makes him sound like a suspect in a particularly fancy game of Clue.

He did a bunch of the usual neuromuscular tests ^[1] plus whacked me various places with the modern version of the doctor’s reflex hammer, which has a round, heavy head that looks more like a very swank pizza cutter than any kind of hammer.

Still don’t know exactly what they are looking for. A certain kind of twitch, I guess.

He seemed satisfied. So I assumed I twitched properly.

Then came what I knew would come : a brain CT scan. When you are preventing stroke, there is really nothing better than a good look at the territory.

I was very tempted to say. “So what you’re saying, Doctor Teal, is that I ought to have my head examined. ”

But you can never tell whether a doctor has a sense of humour beforehand and if he had failed to laugh it would have bummed me out, so I kept it to myself until I could write it down here.

Which I have now done. Checkmark sound effect.

I will hear from Richmond General about my brain CAT scan soon.

I hope this time, the cat is a Persian. They’re so fluffy!

Sadly, then the appointment ended and the trouble began. I got the receptionist to call Julian and headed down to wait for him at the front of the building.

But I goofed, went out the wrong way, and ended up behind the building instead. No problem, I will just go back through the building.

Nope! The door locked behind me. It is literally impossible for me to go back through the building to where Julian is waiting for me.

No problem, I will just go around the building instead.

But no, that makes too much sense. And this is Downtown Vancouver, where the motto is “Hey, FUCK YOU for walking!”.

Or driving. Or biking. Or daring to be alive period.

So my attempt to “go around the building” ended up causing me to walk block after block along 10th in a vain search for the place where I could get back onto Laurel.

And getting increasingly lost. Eventually I had to sit down because my poor wimpy legs were about to give out.

Only when I tried to sit on this brick fence thing, I missed, and landed on my big fat butt on the sidewalk instead.

No harm done. I am well cushioned there. I sat on the sidewalk like a little kid, and contemplated my fate.

Then I tried to get up.

Unsurprisingly, I could not.

Not with my knees as fucked up as they are. To get up I would have had to rest my full weight on my knees and they would have gone POP and that would be bad.

So there I sat, helpless, unable to even stand up, and knowing poor Julian was probably going crazy with worry over me as he searched for me.

Luckily, a sweet lady with a French accent stopped and asked me if I “needed any ‘elp”. I said yes, very much so, and she recruited this talk blonde dude.

He was very sweet and called Julian and told him where I was, then he and a thickly built Asian dude hoisted me onto my feet.

Then Julian showed up, I thanked my rescuers profusely, and I got in the car.

THE END. Roll credits.

No lasting harm, as far as I know. My legs hate me right now but I will get over it. Once more life conspired to fuck me over and show me how helpless and pathetic I am. And one fundamental truth was made abundantly clear :

I really need to get a fucking cell phone,.

More after the break.

---

Witness the aftermath

Wow, that first part was 755 words. Now I have to come up with 245 more.

Gee, I hope I can make it.

I seem to have bounced back from today’s circus of fuckery. ^[2] After some rest, my legs are not in nearly as much pain and I don’t ache all over like I did before.

And I’m not as tired either, of course. Which reminds me : my legs may have given out, but you know what didn’t?

My heart. It kept up the pace marvelously. Did not get a peep of complaint from it for the whole experience. My lungs bitched a little as did my feet but my heart did not.

Meaning those stents worked. Fuckin A.

My heart works reasonably well now. Which means there is one fewer reason for me to not be getting some much needed exercise.

If I could get my lungs working this well, I would probably exercise more. Nothing discourages healthy motion like pain.

Pain is nature’s way of saying, “Don’t do that!”. Even when “that” is something very good for your long term well-being.

Because nature is dumb.

I would also need decent shoes, ones that let me walk without pain. Ones that can withstand my elephantine weight without becoming flatter than a gluten free crepe.

Surely such things exist. Surely somewhere out there are fat people with arch support.

If I could get all that together, the last step would be to buy myself a good sturdy used bicycle in time for the weather to get better in the spring.

Richmond is extremely flat and therefore a joy to bike around, and riding a bicycle is a form of exercise I already know I like. Plus I would have more freedom.

Then again, I am not very durable any more. Maybe I would be better off confining my activities to whatever Peloton type machines I can get access to.

Part of me wants to get myself moving. I know that I would be much healthier and happier if I had a way to burn off excess energy and get my juices flowing. This extremely sedentary life is just plain no good.

But I am so scared. Scared of pain, scared of leaving my dark little hole, scared of having to be truly alive and fully awake when it makes reality so goddamned loud.

I need to be able to put reality on a dimmer switch so I can raise the brightness slowly.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow,.

“But maybe, ” said the guru in the festival shirt, “the real reason you’re not happy is that deep down you don’t want to be. “

Several of us cried out softly and Trina said “Hey listen pal…”. In the background, whatever DJ Tricky Gnosis was playing on the dance for had transitioned to a slow intense breakdown with bass drums thumping just like a heartbeat.

“No, hear me out. ” said the guru as he absently wiped the sweat from his hairy knuckles off onto his festival shirt. “Maybe the idea of happiness scares the fuck out of you because deep down you think that is when reality will GET you. That it’s just waiting for you to think you’re happy and drop your guard so it can truly fuck you over and the only way to stop that from happening is to constantly sabotage anything that looks like it might lead to true happiness. ”

Someone…. maybe Keith… snorted in derision. Samantha rolled her eyes. Tub shook his head in disbelief.

But nobody stopped listening. Nobody moved away.

“Look, I can prove it. ” said the guru after a monster pull of his White Claw, “Everybody imagine a very happy person. Smiling from ear to ear, clearly loving life. ”

“Now tell me…. what do you think of this person? Don’t think about it, just spit out the first thing that comes to mind. ” said the guru.

“What’s wrong with them?” said Tub.

“Yeah, are they like…. retarded, or something?” said what’s her name.. Jesse’s new foreign exchange student girlfriend. (Lamdi? Lachmi? Something like that. )

“Yeah, or crazy. ” said Keith. Everybody laughed.

“Nah, that dude is obviously higher than a satellite, man. ” said Amahl. Everybody laughed even harder at that.

“Right. ” said the guru.” All plausible theories. But note that the one thing none of you thought of was that he was happy for a perfectly good reason. Like he was about to see his favorite person in the world, or he just got really good news. ”

“Yeah well…. fuck that. ” said Keith softly but clearly.

“My point exactly, Keith. ” said the guru. “all of you found the very idea of this completely theoretical person being genuinely happy so intolerably painful that you had to immediately convince yourself that it was fake. He’s not REALLY happy, it’s just retardation, or insanity, or drugs…. anything but actual, real, sincere happiness. ”

No wonder none of you are happy when you don’t even believe in happiness. ”

The guru then sat back in the beat up old La-Z-Boy and murdered the rest of his White Claw with one last savage gulp.

Once he got his breath back, he said “I look around and it seems like everyone’s fucking miserable. What the hell went wrong? How did we as a people fuck up so badly that not even young people are happy any more?”

“Yeah but…. ” said Yolanda. Yes, Yolanda. Turns out she CAN talk. “… but are we really all that miserable? Or are we just copying what everyone else is doing? ”

“Yeah! ” said Keith. “Maybe we’re all just afraid to show it when we’re happy because we know everyone will make fun of us and put us down. ”

“Maybe we pretend to be miserable, ” said Yolanda, ” because we want people to think we are normal”.

“Well ain’t that fucked up.” said Tub, and everyone nodded.

“And on that happy note, I’m gonna go find me another Claw. ” said the guru we all assumed had come with someone else.

After that, we all kind of drifted away.

More after the break.

---

Steam rose in big puffy bursts like the hot fetid breath of some enormous underground beast outside Interrogation Room C at the MVPD.

“Well, here we are again, old friend. ” said the Jack O’Lantern, aka Fennis “Eely” McGraw. “The boys from the Box^[1] are on their way to give me another six glorious months of luxurious living on the State’s dime in one of their snug and secure little cells and I get to be safe from the stress and demands of reality until I get bored, break out, kill a bunch of people, and get caught and start the whole thing over again. ”

He sighed contently. “What can I say? The system works. ”

With a flash of motion far too fast for the human eye to follow, Night Guardian had darted across the room and Jack O’ Lantern was on the ground gasping for air and whimpering in pain and shock.

“You’re gonna pay… my lawyer… ” Jack managed to choke out. ”

“…will do absolutely nothing because the blow I just delivered leaves no marks whatsoever. No bruise, no welt, nothing that would show up on an X-ray. As far as forensic medicine is concerned, it never happened. That’s why the men who taught it to me called it the ‘ghost punch’. Impressive. isn’t it? ” said the Night Guardian.

Jack made some strangled, wet noises.

“I’ll take that as a yes. One more thing you need to know : the solar plexus is not the only place I can land it. The others hurt a hell of a lot more. Got it?”

Jack nodded dumbly.

“Now listen very closely to what I am about to say, Fennis : if I ever seen you again, I will kill you. No trial. No jury. No hotshot lawyer looking to prove himself. No corrupt and lazy judge more interested in what’s for dinner that the case he’s presiding over. No cops that conveniently become really clumsy when handling evidence. There will be no force on God’s green Earth that can save you. I see you outside the Box, and you die. Do you understand me?” said the Night Guardian.

Jack nodded like Jack in the Box with a worn out spring.

“But…. but you’re one of the… ” stammered Jack in a small meek voice.

“One of the good guys?” said Night Guardian. “Is that what you were going to say? Correction : I was one of the good guys. But you beat that out of me, Jack. It took you a while, but you did it. By constantly exploiting my mercy, my compassion, my patience, and my trust, you murdered all of them just like all the rest of your victims and now all that I have left is my determination to make sure you never hurt anyone ever again.”

“So are you going to….. k-k-kill me?” Jack asked in a voice trembling with fear.

The Night Guardian smiled a smile black enough to make the Devil flinch.

“No, Fenny. That would be far too kind. Instead, I want to see you try to survive in a world where you actually have to behave yourself. Where you know you will never know freedom again because escape is suicide and all it would accomplish is to make me a very happy man when I murder you. Where you are treated just like any other prisoner because I’ve let the residents of the Box know that whoever kills the Jack o’ Lantern will have a million dollars waiting for them, tax free, when they get out. Where you actually have to suffer the consequences of your actions and all that vaunted criminal genius can do you absolutely no good. I’m going to take all the fun out of your life, Fen, and then I am going to make sure you live a long, long time. ”

The outer door banged open and a dozen very serious looking prison guards filed ino the room and surrounded Jack.

“But…. but…. that’s monstrous!” gibbered Jack.

“I learned from the best. Take him away. I’m done with him now. ”

And as the guards dragged a whimpering, wailing, pathetic little wretch of a man in a cut-rate Halloween costume out of the room, for the first time in a very long time, the Night Guardian smiled.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

It is long overdue.

All the major world religions are ancient. They are thoroughly fossilized and hidebound and have drifted so far from the reasons they were founded as to become the polar opposite of their founder’s vision without even knowing it.

They rely on things like fear, tradition, and superstition to propagate themselves instead of, ya know, actually having answers for people.

In my mind, a religion dies the moment it stops answering people’s questions and start punishing people for asking them instead.

To me, that means they have admitted they have failed the people and have no idea what they are talking about and need to be replaced.

What is needed, then, is a brand new religion that has the best parts of the old religions, the parts that actually helped people, without all the worthless and/or toxic bullshit the old religions drag along with them out of ignorance and force of habit.

Oh, and corruption. There’s always those in the priest class who directly benefit in terms of power and status from keeping things exactly as they are despite all the human suffering it causes.

Don’t get me started.

This new religion would have to immediately jettison all the mindless taboos around sex, diet, and the rest.

None of them can justify their existence any more, and frankly do vastly more harm than good by creating pointless fear, guilt, and superstition in people and often trapping them in opposition to their own natural instincts instead of letting them live free to express those deep drives however they see fit as long as basic hygiene is observed.

So this new religion would have no opinion on what kind of sex you have, what foods you eat with other foods, what position your body is in when you pray, or what the building where you get together once a week is called.

None of those are matters of concern to religion. Do as thou wilt.

This religion would also lack a cosmology. Or rather, its only cosmology is science. Matters of the origin of the universe, healthy living, and so on are also not matters of concern to religion. Believe the science.

Instead, the new religion would concentrate on the true and very important needs that only religion can fulfill.

Needs for things like comfort in times of trial, giving one a sense of one’s place in the larger world, a sense of cosmic justice, moral guidance, a source of hope and forgiveness and mercy, and so forth and so on.

It would make people feel safe, not scared. Comforted, not afflicted. Included, not exclusive. United in love, not divided by hate. Calm, not confused. And in harmony with nature and themselves instead of divided against them.

Above all, it would be centrally and irrevocably based on true humanism. No shortcuts, lazy justifications, or other betrayals. We care for one another, period.

Nobody is disposable, everybody counts, and there is no “them”.

We are all us.

And we are united in our humanity. We are all frail and fragile souls trying to make it through this crude and startling spectacle called life, and our best bet for survival is always to huddle together for warmth so we can face the night together.

We’re all we’ve got, people. Might as well get along.

More after the break.

---

You got the touch!

The Midas Touch, that is, and I ain’t talking muffler repair.

I recently installed a mod called Midas Magic Spells of Aurum to my Oblivion.

I was about to play a mage for the second time and the mod promised to add like 300 new spells to the game so it seemed like just the thing to spice things up this time.

But once more I was a victim of my attempts to bypass my chronic indecision by just grabbing the first thing I see that seems like it would fit the bill without looking at the fine print, let alone other options.

Did you know there are people who can consume all the available information about all the alternatives and then actually come to a decision?

Boggles the mind. I want their kung-fu.

Because you see, the mod doesn’t just add the spells to the ones available from various vendors throughout the game, like the ones I had in Skyrim did, oh no.

This one gets all cute with it.

To get the spells, you have to combine various things (like plants, weapons, household objects, and other bric-a-brac) in this magic device, add a Gold Nugget (hence the Midas and Aurum part), then cast any spell on the device.

Then the device coverts the stuff into “magic residue”, which confers the spell upon you when you… eat it.

That does not bear thinking on.

Now compared to just buying the fucking thing, doing all that to get a spell is a serious hassle. And when I first tried the thing out, I was very pissed off.

But I have gotten used to it now and I am starting to really get into it. It’s a lot of fun to find various bits and pieces and realize you now have what it takes to get something new and shiny.

Admittedly, remembering the recipes can be tricky. But all you really need is to remember what ingredient you are missing.

And just grab one of everything in the meantime. Or everything that seems familiar from the recipe books, anyhow.

Right now, my main beef is with the need for Gold Nuggets.

Those fuckers are neither common nor easy to come by. There’s nowhere you can go to buy them, only places that MIGHT have one for sale and places where you MIGHT find one amongst the random loot.

That seems like too much to ask. So I have installed this.

Yeah, it’s a blatant cheat. And I haven’t quite decided to actually use it yet. I am going to explore my options for getting my Nugs on au naturel first.

But I will go get the spell anyway. Might as well.

Just in case.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.